HTTP status codes for REST
May 14, 2012
While developing the upcoming Essential REST course for DevelopMentor, I thought it would be useful to put together a chart illustrating the common HTTP status codes used for each of the common HTTP methods. This isn’t exhaustive and many of the status codes below might be issued by the infrastructure and not directly by your application code, but I think this is useful in keeping in mind the sorts of things your code might need to return.
| method | status | phrase | request headers | response headers | content in response | note |
| GET | 200 | OK | ETag | Yes | ||
| 304 | Not Modified | If-None-Match | ETag | resource has not changed since read | ||
| 401 | Unauthorized | WWW-Authenticate | ||||
| 404 | Not Found | |||||
| 405 | Method Not Allowed | Allow:GET, … | ||||
| 406 | Not Acceptable | Accept | server doesn’t have the content type requested | |||
| 410 | Gone | was here but not anymore | ||||
| 500 | Server Error | |||||
| 503 | Service Unavailable | request can be retried later | ||||
| POST | 201 | Created | Location, ETag | Optional | ||
| 400 | Bad Request | e.g. validation error | ||||
| 401 | Unauthorized | WWW-Authenticate | ||||
| 405 | Method Not Allowed | Allow:GET, … | ||||
| 415 | Unsupported Media Type | Content-Type | server doesn’t support that content type | |||
| 500 | Server Error | |||||
| 503 | Service Unavailable | request can be retried later | ||||
| PUT | 200 | OK | ETag | Yes | ||
| 204 | No Content | ETag | ||||
| 400 | Bad Request | e.g. validation error | ||||
| 401 | Unauthorized | WWW-Authenticate | ||||
| 404 | Not Found | |||||
| 405 | Method Not Allowed | Allow:GET, … | ||||
| 409 | Conflict | can’t update due to state of resource | ||||
| 412 | Precondition Failed | If-Match | ETag | resource has changed since read | ||
| 415 | Unsupported Media Type | Content-Type | server doesn’t support that content type | |||
| 500 | Server Error | |||||
| 503 | Service Unavailable | request can be retried later | ||||
| DELETE | 204 | No Content | ||||
| 401 | Unauthorized | WWW-Authenticate | ||||
| 404 | Not Found | |||||
| 405 | Method Not Allowed | Allow:GET, … | ||||
| 412 | Precondition Failed | If-Match | resource has changed since read | |||
| 409 | Conflict | can’t update due to state of resource | ||||
| 500 | Server Error | |||||
| 503 | Service Unavailable | request can be retried later |
brockallen 
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