The handler API requires users to implement a method with six arguments to receive run status data. This is bad because it is inflexible, we could never add new data to the handler without forcing everyone to rewrite all of their existing ones (otherwise they'd get errors like, "wrong number of arguments 7 for 6"). This also forces complexity on the user, when it can be elegantly dealt with internally in chef instead. Also, the JSON File handler uses methods that don't exist, so it doesn't work, and some implementation that is specific to the JSON file handler is in the base handler class.

If we fix all of these right now, we can have an extensible API that will be more amenable to adding features at a later time without causing the trauma of forcing people to rewrite a bunch of code.