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Which HTTP response code is appropriate for a download that is not available on the system but it will be available in the future.

If a browser/download manager asks for a file that is not available on the system at the moment (temporary unavailable), but we want the browser/DM to retry later for that file, which HTTP status code to return?

Wooble
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Xaqron
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  • possible duplicate of [HTTP status code for temporarily unavailable pages](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4642923/http-status-code-for-temporarily-unavailable-pages) – Nix May 23 '11 at 20:25
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    "404 Not Found The requested resource could not be found but may be available again in the future. Subsequent requests by the client are permissible." Seems very clear. Why isn't this the obvious choice? What's your **real** question? – S.Lott May 23 '11 at 20:25
  • @S.Lott: It's not true. `Download Manager` will give up further requests which I DON'T want. I want `DM` tries later but it assumes the file doesn't exist. – Xaqron May 23 '11 at 20:30

2 Answers2

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10.2.3 202 Accepted

The request has been accepted for processing, but the processing has not been completed. The request might or might not eventually be acted upon, as it might be disallowed when processing actually takes place. There is no facility for re-sending a status code from an asynchronous operation such as this.

The 202 response is intentionally non-committal. Its purpose is to allow a server to accept a request for some other process (perhaps a batch-oriented process that is only run once per day) without requiring that the user agent's connection to the server persist until the process is completed. The entity returned with this response SHOULD include an indication of the request's current status and either a pointer to a status monitor or some estimate of when the user can expect the request to be fulfilled.

Source: http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html

onteria_
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0

HTTP 404 as defined here:

[...] The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent. [...]

Josef Pfleger
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