HTTP status code for bad data

Question

What HTTP status code should I return when a client posts bad data (e.g. a string when integer was expected)?

I've been using 400 Bad Request, but as I read over the HTTP docs that seems more applicable to HTTP protocol errors.

I'd like to use a status code so that Flash and AJAX clients can distinguish between success, bad data, and server error without having to parse a response.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1364527/http-status-code-for-bad-data

Answer 1

This is exactly what 400 is for. Yes, it's used for bad HTTP protocol usage, but it's not exclusively for that purpose.