Create request with POST, which response codes 200 or 201 and content

The idea is that the response body gives you a page that links you to the thing:

201 Created The 201 (Created) status code indicates that the request has been fulfilled and has resulted in one or more new resources being created. The primary resource created by the request is identified by either a Location header field in the response or, if no Location field is received, by the effective request URI.

This means that you would include a Location in the response header that gives the URL of where you can find the newly created thing:

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Date: Sat, 02 Apr 2016 12:22:40 GMT
Location: http://stackoverflow.com/a/36373586/12597

Response body

They then go on to mention what you should include in the response body:

The 201 response payload typically describes and links to the resource(s) created.

For the human using the browser, you give them something they can look at, and click, to get to their newly created resource:

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Date: Sat, 02 Apr 2016 12:22:40 GMT
Location: http://stackoverflow.com/a/36373586/12597
Content-Type: text/html

Your answer has been saved! 
Click <A href="/a/36373586/12597">here</A> to view it.

If the page will only be used by a robot, the it makes sense to have the response be computer readable:

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Date: Sat, 02 Apr 2016 12:22:40 GMT
Location: http://stackoverflow.com/a/36373586/12597
Content-Type: application/xml

<createdResources>
   <questionID>1860645</questionID>
   <answerID>36373586</answerID>
   <primary>/a/36373586/12597</primary>
   <additional>
      <resource>http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1860645/create-request-with-post-which-response-codes-200-or-201-and-content/36373586#36373586</resource>
      <resource>http://stackoverflow.com/a/1962757/12597</resource>
   </additional>
</createdResource>

Or, if you prefer:

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Date: Sat, 02 Apr 2016 12:22:40 GMT
Location: http://stackoverflow.com/a/36373586/12597
Content-Type: application/json

{ 
   "questionID": 1860645, 
   "answerID": 36373586,
   "primary": "/a/36373586/12597",
   "additional": [
      "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1860645/create-request-with-post-which-response-codes-200-or-201-and-content/36373586#36373586",
      "http://stackoverflow.com/a/36373586/12597"
   ]
}

The response is entirely up to you; it's arbitrarily what you'd like.

Cache friendly

Finally there's the optimization that I can pre-cache the created resource (because I already have the content; I just uploaded it). The server can return a date or ETag which I can store with the content I just uploaded:

See Section 7.2 for a discussion of the meaning and purpose of validator header fields, such as ETag and Last-Modified, in a 201 response.

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Date: Sat, 02 Apr 2016 12:22:40 GMT
Location: http://stackoverflow.com/a/23704283/12597
Content-Type: text/html
ETag: JF2CA53BOMQGU5LTOQQGC3RAMV4GC3LQNRSS4
Last-Modified: Sat, 02 Apr 2016 12:22:39 GMT 

Your answer has been saved! 
Click <A href="/a/36373586/12597">here</A> to view it.

And ETag s are purely arbitrary values. Having them be different when a resource changes (and caches need to be updated) is all that matters. The ETag is usually a hash (e.g. SHA2-256). But it can be a database rowversion, or an incrementing revision number. Anything that will change when the thing changes.

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In a few words:

200 when an object is created and returned

201 when an object is created but only its reference is returned (such as an ID or a link)

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I think atompub REST API is a great example of a restful service. See the snippet below from the atompub spec:

POST /edit/ HTTP/1.1
Host: example.org
User-Agent: Thingio/1.0
Authorization: Basic ZGFmZnk6c2VjZXJldA==
Content-Type: application/atom+xml;type=entry
Content-Length: nnn
Slug: First Post

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<entry xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
  <title>Atom-Powered Robots Run Amok</title>
  <id>urn:uuid:1225c695-cfb8-4ebb-aaaa-80da344efa6a</id>
  <updated>2003-12-13T18:30:02Z</updated>
  <author><name>John Doe</name></author>
  <content>Some text.</content>
</entry>

The server signals a successful creation with a status code of 201. The response includes a Location header indicating the Member Entry URI of the Atom Entry, and a representation of that Entry in the body of the response.

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2005 17:17:11 GMT
Content-Length: nnn
Content-Type: application/atom+xml;type=entry;charset="utf-8"
Location: http://example.org/edit/first-post.atom
ETag: "c180de84f991g8"  

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<entry xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
  <title>Atom-Powered Robots Run Amok</title>
  <id>urn:uuid:1225c695-cfb8-4ebb-aaaa-80da344efa6a</id>
  <updated>2003-12-13T18:30:02Z</updated>
  <author><name>John Doe</name></author>
  <content>Some text.</content>
  <link rel="edit"
      href="http://example.org/edit/first-post.atom"/>
</entry>

The Entry created and returned by the Collection might not match the Entry POSTed by the client. A server MAY change the values of various elements in the Entry, such as the atom:id, atom:updated, and atom:author values, and MAY choose to remove or add other elements and attributes, or change element content and attribute values.

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Check out HTTP: Method Definitions: POST.

The action performed by the POST method might not result in a resource that can be identified by a URI. In this case, either 200 (OK) or 204 (No Content) is the appropriate response status, depending on whether or not the response includes an entity that describes the result. If a resource has been created on the origin server, the response SHOULD be 201 (Created) and contain an entity which describes the status of the request and refers to the new resource, and a Location header (see section 14.30).

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http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.19

It's just a colon delimited key-value.

ETag: "xyzzy"

It can be any type of text data - I generally include a JSON string with the identifier of the item created. The ease of testing alone makes including it worthwhile.

ETag: "{ id: 1234, uri: 'http://domain.com/comments/1234', type: 'comment' }"

In this example, the identifier, the uri, and type of the created item are the "resource characteristics and location".

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The output is actually dependent on the content type being requested. However, at minimum you should put the resource that was created in Location. Just like the Post-Redirect-Get pattern.

In my case I leave it blank until requested otherwise. Since that is the behavior of JAX-RS when using Response.created().

However, just note that browsers and frameworks like Angular do not follow 201's automatically. I have noted the behaviour in http://www.trajano.net/2013/05/201-created-with-angular-resource/

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Another answer I would have for this would be to take a pragmatic approach and keep your REST API contract simple. In my case I had refactored my REST API to make things more testable without resorting to JavaScript or XHR, just simple HTML forms and links.

So to be more specific on your question above, I'd just use return code 200 and have the returned message contain a JSON message that your application can understand. Depending on your needs it may require the ID of the object that is newly created so the web application can get the data in another call.

One note, in my refactored API contract, POST responses should not contain any cacheable data as POSTs are not really cachable, so limit it to IDs that can be requested and cached using a GET request.

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