Reference Guide

REST responses

Topics:

• Response components

•

HTTP response headers

• HTTP status codes

• JSON collection response body

• JSON instance response body

• JSON create response body

• Response with no body

• JSON job response body

• Error response

Response components

Each response to a REST API request consists of a response header, HTTP status code (in the response header), and JSON

response body, if applicable:

● The response header contains metadata about the response being sent.

● The HTTP status code in the response header indicates whether a request is successful or unsuccessful.

○ An HTTP status code in the 2xx family, such as 200 OK or 201 Created, indicates a correctly processed request.

○ An HTTP status code in the 4xx family indicates an error in the request. For example, a 400 status code indicates a badly

formed request, and a 401 status code indicates an authorization error.

○ An HTTP status code in the 5xx family indicates a server failure. For example a 500 status code indicates an internal

server error, and a 503 status code indicates that the REST service is temporarily unavailable.

● The JSON response body varies according to the request type and whether a request was successful. For example, a

collection response body is returned in response to a successful GET collection request, and an instance response body is

returned in response to an instance request.

HTTP response headers

A response from the REST API always includes HTTP response headers that contain metadata about the response being sent.

The following HTTP headers appear in every REST API response:

Table 2. HTTP response headers in the REST API

HTTP header Description

Content-Type This header is set to application/json, although it can be application/zip,

document/text, or application/binary.

Content-Length This header refers to the byte length of the HTTP body.

Set-Cookie The login session ticket (auth_cookie) is returned in the first request of the session

and required for all subsequent requests, unless you pass the user ID and password with

each request. Because the API uses cookie-based authentication, the HTTP client must

support cookies in order to use the API.

For more information, see Connecting and authenticating.

DELL-EMC-TOKEN Before issuing any REST call which changes the state of the object (such as POST,

PATCH or DELETE) send a GET request to receive a CSRF token as response header

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