Prentice Hall and Sun Microsystems. Personal use only; do not redistribute.

134

Chapter 6 Generating the Server Response: HTTP Status Codes

now. If the server thinks it can handle it later, it should include a 

Retry After

 response header. This value is new in HTTP 1.1. 

414 (Request URI Too Long)

The 414 (

SC_REQUEST_URI_TOO_LONG

) status is used when the URI is 

too long. In this context,  URI  means the part of the URL that came 

after the host and port in the URL. For example, in 

http://www.y2k disaster.com:8080/we/look/silly/now/

, the 

URI is 

/we/look/silly/now/

. This status code is new in HTTP 1.1. 

415 (Unsupported Media Type)

A value of 415 (

SC_UNSUPPORTED_MEDIA_TYPE

) means that the request 

had an attached document of a type the server doesn't know how to 

handle. This status code is new in HTTP 1.1. 

416 (Requested Range Not Satisfiable)

A status code of 416 signifies that the client included an unsatisfiable 

Range

 header in the request. This value is new in HTTP 1.1. Surpris 

ingly, the constant that corresponds to this value was omitted from 

HttpServletResponse

 in version 2.1 of the servlet API.

Core Note

In version 2.1 of the servlet specification, there is no 

SC_REQUESTED_RANGE_NOT_SATISFIABLE

 constant in 

HttpServletResponse

, so you have to use 416 explicitly. The constant 

is available in version 2.2 and later.

417 (Expectation Failed)

If the server receives an 

Expect

 request header with a value of 

100 continue

, it means that the client is asking if it can send an 

attached document in a follow up request. In such a case, the server 

should either respond with this status (417) to tell the browser it won't 

accept the document or use 100 (

SC_CONTINUE

) to tell the client to go 

ahead. This status code is new in HTTP 1.1. 

500 (Internal Server Error)

500 (

SC_INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR

) is the generic  server is confused  

status code. It often results from CGI programs or (heaven forbid!) 

servlets that crash or return improperly formatted headers. 

Second edition of this book: www.coreservlets.com; Sequel: www.moreservlets.com.

Servlet and JSP training courses by book's author: courses.coreservlets.com.