Posted by Janwillem Borleffs on 10/02/05 16:07

R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah wrote:
> Is it necessary or is there any standard to send HTTP header status
> for form inputs ? Say, the user is entering invalid password in login
> form and now all the applications I have seen are just displaying
> error messages above the form (with HTTP status 200); is it necessary
> to send 401 status in this case?
>

The 401 header is generally only used with REALM authentication. When this
type of authentication isn't used, the HTTP 200 header is more appropriate,
because the page is found and the error is handled on the page itself.

Another reason for using HTTP headers is when the application responses are
interpreted by another application. A quick look at the status then will
give an indication of the success rate, without parsing the response body.


JW

[Back to original message]