HTTP & REST - adriana-401-advanced-javascript/seattle-javascript-401n13 GitHub Wiki
HTTP - stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. This is information needed for using the web. How information is rendered, where it's coming from, how to display it and such.
REST - stands for Representational State Transfer. Uses GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, and DESTROY, these are similar to CRUD operations. REST is used for HTTP methods.
Status Codes
The server interacts with codes, these codes help figure out problems and also let you know when things are working.
100s: Informational Messages All HTTP/1.1 clients are required to accept the Transfer-Encoding header.
This class of codes was introduced in HTTP/1.1 and is purely provisional. The server can send a Expect: 100-continue message, telling the client to continue sending the remainder of the request, or ignore if it has already sent it. HTTP/1.0 clients are supposed to ignore this header.
200s: Successful 200 means OK. 202 Accepted: the request was accepted but may not include the resource in the response. This is useful for async processing on the server side. The server may choose to send information for monitoring. 204 No Content: there is no message body in the response. 205 Reset Content: indicates to the client to reset its document view. 206 Partial Content: indicates that the response only contains partial content. Additional headers indicate the exact range and content expiration information.
300s: Redirection 301 Moved Permanently: the resource is now located at a new URL. 303 See Other: the resource is temporarily located at a new URL. The Location response header contains the temporary URL. 304 Not Modified: the server has determined that the resource has not changed and the client should use its cached copy. This relies on the fact that the client is sending ETag (Entity Tag) information that is a hash of the content. The server compares this with its own computed ETag to check for modifications.
400s: Client Error These codes are used when the server thinks that the client is at fault, either by requesting an invalid resource or making a bad request. The most popular code in this class is 404 Not Found, which I think everyone will identify with. 404 indicates that the resource is invalid and does not exist on the server. The other codes in this class include:
400 Bad Request: the request was malformed. 401 Unauthorized: request requires authentication. The client can repeat the request with the Authorization header. If the client already included the Authorization header, then the credentials were wrong. 403 Forbidden: server has denied access to the resource. 404 indicates that the resource is invalid and does not exist on the server. This requires the client to take additional action. The most common use-case is to jump to a different URL in order to fetch the resource. 405 Method Not Allowed: invalid HTTP verb used in the request line, or the server does not support that verb. 409 Conflict: the server could not complete the request because the client is trying to modify a resource that is newer than the client's timestamp. Conflicts arise mostly for PUT requests during collaborative edits on a resource.
500s: Server Error This class of codes are used to indicate a server failure while processing the request. The most commonly used error code is 500 Internal Server Error. The others in this class are:
501 Not Implemented: the server does not yet support the requested functionality. 503 Service Unavailable: this could happen if an internal system on the server has failed or the server is overloaded. Typically, the server won't even respond and the request will timeout.