First, what are status codes?<\/p>\n
For each HTTP request, there is an HTTP response generated.<\/p>\n
There are some standard ‘status codes’ indicating if the server understood the request.<\/p>\n
Common ones are 200 (Ok), 404 (Page not found), 500 (Internal server error) and so on.<\/p>\n
While developing API’s sometimes they are not designed to be used by anyone other that the product’s own front end.<\/p>\n
They can therefore become a bit sloppy in generating HTTP responses, since the front end code is going through the response body anyway.<\/p>\n
This ‘might’ work for a handful of people, it’s generally not a great practice, and certainly makes things harder for API automation.<\/p>\n
On that note, for automation folks even if the status codes are not used correctly, still do verify them.<\/p>\n
Links to resources on understanding HTTP messages and responses.<\/p>\n<\/div>