Subject: #229: Considerations for registering new status codes

From: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 17:13:36 +1100

<http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/229>

I've incorporated the proposal below as a starting point:

--->8---

When it is necessary to express new semantics for a HTTP response that aren't specific to a single application or media type, and currently defined status codes are inadequate, a new status code can be registered [ref to 4.1].

New HTTP status codes MUST be defined in one of the categories defined in [ref to section 8]. They MUST NOT disallow a response body, although they MAY mandate a zero-length response body. They MAY require the presence of particular HTTP response header.

Likewise, their definitions MAY specify that caches are allowed to use heuristics to determine their freshness [ref to p6] (by default, it is not allowed), and MAY define how to determine the resource which they carry a representation for [ref to p2 6.1] (by default, it is anonymous).

If there are particular request conditions that produce a response containing the status code (e.g., request headers and/or method(s)), they SHOULD be described in detail.

New HTTP status codes SHOULD be registered in a document that isn't specific to an application or other use of HTTP, so that it's clear that they are not specific to that application or extension.

---8<---

I expect we'll find more here, but wanted to get something in. Feedback appreciated, as always.

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Mark Nottingham   http://www.mnot.net/