To be fair I was being a tiny bit inflammatory. I think it's appropriate to use HTTP codes sparingly. Personally I'll use 401 and 500 but everything else is 200. And if the API is meant for public consumption by 3rd party devs then meeting expectations is more important than my personal philosophy.
But basically the overlap between the classic HTTP status codes and your API's functionality is IMO coincidence. Unless you're building a BLOB store or HTTP middleware you probably do not have enough overlap for it to be truly appropriate for your domain. HTTP is the envelope. It doesn't need to mix with your custom JSON API.
But basically the overlap between the classic HTTP status codes and your API's functionality is IMO coincidence. Unless you're building a BLOB store or HTTP middleware you probably do not have enough overlap for it to be truly appropriate for your domain. HTTP is the envelope. It doesn't need to mix with your custom JSON API.