Is 502 an appropriate status code for a database error?

No, I don’t think an HTTP 502 Bad Gateway error is appropriate when a database error occurs.

HTTP errors say something about the HTTP protocol. This specific error indicates a server is trying to relay the HTTP request, but the upstream server did not respond correctly.

Your web application communicating with a database server is outside the realm of HTTP and any errors should be wrapped in the generic HTTP 500 Internal server error response code.

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