HTTP Status Code 1.01
Dr. Drew Hwang

HTTP 1.1 Proposed Specification Document

6.1.1 Status Code and Reason Phrase

The Status-Code element is a 3-digit integer result code of the attempt to understand and satisfy the request. These codes are fully defined in section 10. The Reason-Phrase is intended to give a short textual description of the Status-Code. The Status-Code is intended for use by automata and the Reason-Phrase is intended for the human user. The client is not required to examine or display the Reason-Phrase.

The first digit of the Status-Code defines the class of response. The last two digits do not have any categorization role. There are 5 values for the first digit:

o 1xx: Informational - Request received, continuing process

o 2xx: Success - The action was successfully received, understood, and accepted

o 3xx: Redirection - Further action must be taken in order to complete the request

o 4xx: Client Error - The request contains bad syntax or cannot be fulfilled

o 5xx: Server Error - The server failed to fulfill an apparently valid request

The individual values of the numeric status codes defined for HTTP/1.1, and an example set of corresponding Reason-Phrase's, are presented below. The reason phrases listed here are only recommended -- they may be replaced by local equivalents without affecting the protocol.

Status-Code = "100" ; Continue
"101" ; Switching Protocols

"200" ; OK
"201" ; Created
"202" ; Accepted
"203" ; Non-Authoritative Information
"204" ; No Content
"205" ; Reset Content
"206" ; Partial Content

"300" ; Multiple Choices
"301" ; Moved Permanently
"302" ; Moved Temporarily
"303" ; See Other
"304" ; Not Modified
"305" ; Use Proxy
"400" ; Bad Request

"401" ; Unauthorized
"402" ; Payment Required
"403" ; Forbidden
"404" ; Not Found
"405" ; Method Not Allowed
"406" ; Not Acceptable
"407" ; Proxy Authentication Required
"408" ; Request Time-out
"409" ; Conflict
"410" ; Gone
"411" ; Length Required
"412" ; Precondition Failed
"413" ; Request Entity Too Large
"414" ; Request-URI Too Large
"415" ; Unsupported Media Type

"500" ; Internal Server Error
"501" ; Not Implemented
"502" ; Bad Gateway
"503" ; Service Unavailable
"504" ; Gateway Time-out
"505" ; HTTP Version not supported

HTTP status codes are extensible. HTTP applications are not required to understand the meaning of all registered status codes, though such understanding is obviously desirable. However, applications MUST understand the class of any status code, as indicated by the first digit, and treat any unrecognized response as being equivalent to the x00 status code of that class, with the exception that an unrecognized response MUST NOT be cached. For example, if an unrecognized status code of 431 is received by the client, it can safely assume that there was something wrong with its request and treat the response as if it had received a 400 status code. In such cases, user agents SHOULD present to the user the entity returned with the response, since that entity is likely to include human-readable information which will explain the unusual status.