Skip to main content
Software Engineering

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

9
  • 1
    "Did the POST from the client to the server transfer a resource to the server, where the server then gave it a URL that the client can view? Yes? Then that is a 201 Created response." 202 Accepted is also acceptable as a response to this if the server cannot act immediately to process the resource, which is what the OP is doing. Commented Apr 21, 2016 at 22:24
  • 1
    The thing is the server is acting immediately. It creates the resource with a URL immediately. It is just the state of the resource is "Pending" (or something). That is a business domain state. As far as the HTTP Protocol is concerned the server acted as soon as it created the resource and gave the client the URL of the resource. You can GET that resource. The POST request itself is not pending. This is what I mean by keeping the two different conceptual domains separate. If the client was sending a fire and forget POST request not acted upon for hours then 202 would be applicable. Commented Apr 22, 2016 at 9:13
  • 1
    No one cares if the url exists but you can't get the data the resource represents because it's still being processed. Might as well NOT create the url until it can be used to get the video. Commented Apr 22, 2016 at 23:01
  • 1
    Again the business logic concept of 'pending' is nothing to do with the state transfer of the HTTP request. The request to create the resource is not 'pending'. For example if I open a mortgage application that application could be in the "pending" state for 6 months, but the actual HTTP request returns immediately. REST doesn't care about the states the resource can be in (including any business logic related 'pending' state) it cares only about the state transfer. Commented Jun 25, 2021 at 10:58
  • 1
    @Maggyero Have to agree with CormacMulhall here. The spec that is quoted in "Asynchronous processing (done wrong)" directly contradicts what he suggests doing in the "done right" part. Specifically the quoted spec says that whatever is put in the Location header is the primary reasource, then in the article he goes on to put the status-uri as the Location. This makes the status object the primary resource (and effectively relegates the result of our processing as a secondary resource). Thus the 201-status is the correct response, as the status resource is in Location and created immediately. Commented Jan 18, 2022 at 8:37