HTTP Utilities

In nap.http is a set of tools to go one step further than Django’s existing HttpResponse.

Status

Firstly, there is STATUS_CODES, which is a list of two-tuples of HTTP Status codes and their descriptions.

Also, and more usefully, there is the STATUS object. Accessing it as a dict, you can look up HTTP status code descriptions by code:

>>> STATUS[401]
'Unauthorized'

However, you can also look up attributes to find out the status code:

>>> STATUS.UNAUTHORIZED
401

This lets it act as a two-way constant.

BaseHttpResponse

This class blends Django’s HttpResponse with Python’s Exception. Why? Because then, when you’re nested who-knows how deep in your code, it can raise a response, instead of having to return one and hope everyone bubbles it all the way up.

  • BaseHttpResponse

    • HttpResponseSuccess

      • OK
      • Created
      • Accepted
      • NoContent
      • ResetContent
      • PartialContent

    • HttpResponseRedirect

      • MultipleChoices
      • MovedPermanently*
      • Found*
      • SeeOther*
      • NotModified
      • UseProxy*
      • TemporaryRedirect
      • PermanentRedirect

      Items marked with a * require a location passed as their first argument. It will be set as the Location header in the response.

    • HttpResponseError

      • BadRequest
      • Unauthorized
      • PaymentRequired
      • Forbidden
      • NotFound
      • MethodNotAllowed
      • NotAcceptable
      • ProxyAuthenticationRequired
      • RequestTimeout
      • Conflict
      • Gone
      • LengthRequired
      • PreconditionFailed
      • RequestEntityTooLarge
      • RequestURITooLong
      • UnsupportedMediaType
      • RequestedRangeNotSatisfiable
      • ExpectationFailed

    • HttpResponseServerError

      • InternalServerError
      • NotImplemented
      • BadGateway
      • ServiceUnavailable
      • GatewayTimeout
      • HttpVersiontNotSupported

It will be clear that, unlike Django, these mostly do not start with HttpResponse. This is a personal preference, in that typically you’d use:

from nap import http

...
    return http.Accept(...)

Http404 versus http.NotFound

Generally in your API, you’ll want to prefer http.NotFound for returning a 404 response. This avoids being caught by the normal 404 handling, so it won’t invoke your handler404.