Crafting Effective HTTP Responses
Learn to create structured, informative responses that improve client-server communication reliability.
1. Response Structure
Status Line
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: public, max-age=3600
Content-Type: application/json
Body Examples
{
"users": [
{"id": 1, "name": "Alice"},
{"id": 2, "name": "Bob"}
],
"meta": {"total": 2}
}
2. Response Types
200 OK
Successful request with standard response body
304 Not Modified
ETag match, response body ommitted
400 Bad Request
Client sent invalid request parameters
503 Service Unavailable
Server temporarily overload
Successful Flow
Request → Server → Response
(Status + Headers + Body)
(Status + Headers + Body)
Error Handling
Bad Request → Server → 400
{"error": "Invalid JSON"}
{"error": "Invalid JSON"}
3. Practical Examples
201 Created
HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Location: /users/123
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 46
{"id": "123", "name": "New User"}
401 Unauthorized
HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthenticated
WWW-Authenticate: Bearer realm="api", error="invalid_token", error_description="Token signature invalid"
4. Response Lifecycle
Response Flow
Header
Body
Trailers
Compression Diagram
GZIP:
Content-Encoding: gzipBrotli:
Content-Encoding: brUncompressed:
Content-Length: 1234