Whenever you visit a web page, your computer will request data from a server through HTTP. Even before the requested page is displayed in your browser, the web server will send the HTTP header that has the status code. The status code provides information about the status of the request. A normal web page gets the status code as 200. But we do not see this as the server proceeds to send the contents of the page. It is only when there is an error, we see the status code 404 Not Found.
Origin of Status Codes
As a part of the HTTP 0.9 specifications, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) established HTTP status codes in 1992. Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web and the first web browser in 1990, defined the status codes.
A brief overview of HTTP status codes is given below.
| Code | Meaning | Description |
| 100 | Continue | Confirms the client about the arrival of the first part of the request and informs to continue with the rest of the request or ignore if the request has been fulfilled |
| 101 | Switching Protocols | Informs the client about the server switching the protocols to that specified in the Upgrade message header field during the current connection. |
| 200 | OK | Standard response for successful requests |
| 201 | Created | Request fulfilled and new resource created |
| 202 | Accepted | Request accepted, but not yet processed |
| 203 | Non-Authoritative Information | Returned meta information was not the definitive set from the origin server. |
| 204 | No Content | Request succeeded without requiring the return of an entity-body |
| 205 | Reset Content | Request succeeded but require resetting of the document view that caused the request |
| 206 | Partial Content | Partial GET request was successful |
