HTTP Response Schema

The HTTP protocol is by far the most prominent protocol on the web today. Most people browsing the web aren't even aware of its existence. They just see a strange "http://" string in front of where they want to go. The great part is that most users of the web don't need to know what HTTP is or how it works. The browser and the web server have a firm understanding of how to use the protocol.

Web clients, including the browser need to understand how to handle HTTP responses. Contained within each HTTP response is a numeric code indicating the status of the request. Although HTTP is a stateless protocol, the client needs to know what happened with each request made to the server. One may consider the response code to be a meta state. The response code can still support statelessness on the server.

Each HTTP response code has a distinct explanation for why the requested responded the way it did. The client can also interpret a more general category, or nature of the response because of the ranges in which each specific code falls under. Here is a brief idea of what the ranges mean:

• 200 - Success.
• 300 - Client action required.
• 400 - Client error.
• 500 - Server error.

In an object-oriented design, these ranges of HTTP response codes can be broadly generalized. This helps to conceptualize how the client can handle several specific response codes in the same way as is illustrated below.