我不认为404是正确的回应。

如果使用404，如何知道是没有找到api，还是数据库中的记录没有找到?

从你的描述，我会使用200 OK，因为你的api执行所有逻辑没有任何问题。只是在数据库中找不到记录。所以，这不是API问题，也不是数据库问题，这是你的问题，你认为记录存在，但它不存在。因此，API执行成功，数据库查询执行成功，但没有发现任何返回。

因此，在这种情况下，我会用

200好了

使用空响应，如数组的[]或对象的{}。

我强烈反对404，而支持204或200的空数据。或者至少应该使用带有404的响应实体。

请求被接收并被正确处理——它确实触发了服务器上的应用程序代码，客户机可能没有犯任何错误，因此整个客户机错误代码(4xx)类可能不合适。

更重要的是，404的发生有很多技术原因。例如，应用程序在服务器上被暂时停用或卸载，代理连接问题等等。

当然，这种情况下存在5xx错误类，但实际上，受影响的中间件组件通常无法知道错误在它们这一边，然后只是假设错误在客户端，然后响应404而不是500/503。

因此，仅根据状态代码，客户端无法区分404(表示“您正在寻找的东西不存在”)和404(表示“有严重错误，请将此错误报告给运维团队”)。

This can be fatal: Imagine an accounting service in your company that lists all the employees that are due to an annual bonus. Unfortunately, the one time when it is called it returns a 404. Does that mean that no-one is due for a bonus, or that the application is currently down for a new deployment and the 404 is actually coming from the tomcat that it's supposed to be installed into, instead of from the application itself? These two scenarios yield the same status code, but they are fundamentally different in their meaning.

对于需要知道所请求的资源不存在而不是暂时不可访问的应用程序来说，没有响应实体的404几乎是行不通的。

此外，许多客户端框架通过抛出异常来响应404，而不询问进一步的问题。这迫使客户端开发人员捕获异常，对其进行评估，然后基于此决定是否将其记录为由监视组件捕获的错误，或者是否忽略它。这对我来说也不太好。

The advantage of 404 over 204 is that it can return a response entity that may contain some information about why the requested resource was not found. But if that really is relevant, then one may also consider using a 200 OK response and design the system in a way that allows for error responses in the payload data. Alternatively, one could use the payload of the 404 response to return structured information to the caller. If he receives e.g. a html page instead of XML or JSON that he can parse, then that is a good indicator that something technical went wrong instead of a "no result" reply that may be valid from the caller's point of view. Or one could use a HTTP response header for that.

尽管如此，我还是更喜欢204或200的空白回复。这样，请求的技术执行状态就与请求的逻辑结果分开了。2xx的意思是“技术执行ok，这就是结果，处理它”。

我认为在大多数情况下，应该让客户来决定一个空的结果是否可以接受。通过返回404而不返回响应实体(尽管技术执行正确)，客户端可能决定将根本不是错误的情况视为错误。

Another perspective: From an operations point of view a 404 may be problematic. Since it can indicate a connectivity/middleware problem rather than a valid service response, i would not want a fluctuating number of "valid" 404s in my metrics/dashboards that might conceal genuine technical issues (e.g. a misconfigured proxy somewhere in the request routing) that should be investigated and fixed. This is further excarbated by some APIs even using 404 instead of 401/403 (e.g. gitlab does such a thing), to conceal the information that the request URI would have been valid but the request lacked authorization to access it. In this case too a 404 should be treated as a technical error and not as a valid "resource not found" result.

Edit: Wow, this has caused a lot of controversy. Here is another argument against 404: Strictly from a HTTP spec (RFC7231) point of view, 404 does not even mean that a resource does not exist. It only means that the server has no current representation of the requested resource available, and this even may be only temporary. So strictly by HTTP spec, 404 is inherently unreliable regarding the nonexistence of a requested thing. If you want to communicate that the requested thing positively does not exist, do not use 404.

为了总结或简化，

2xx:可选数据:格式良好的URI: Criteria不是URI的一部分:如果Criteria是可选的，可以在@RequestBody和@RequestParam中指定，应该导致2xx。例如:按名称/状态过滤

标准是URI的一部分:如果标准是强制性的，只能在@PathVariable中指定，那么它应该导致4xx。例如:按唯一id查找。

对于所问的情况: "users/9"将是4xx(可能是404) 但是对于“用户”呢?Name =superman”应该是2xx(可能是204)

我得说，两者都不太合适。 正如@anneb所说的，我也认为部分问题来自于使用HTTP响应代码来传输与RESTful服务相关的状态。REST服务关于其自身处理的任何信息都应该通过特定于REST的代码来传输。

1

我认为，如果HTTP服务器发现任何服务已经准备好响应它发送的请求，它不应该响应HTTP 404——最后，服务器找到了一些东西——除非处理请求的服务明确地告诉它。

让我们暂时假设以下URL: http://example.com/service/return/test。

Case A is that the server is “simply looking for the file on the file system“. If it is not present, 404 is correct. The same is true, if it asks some kind of service to deliver exactly this file and that service tells it that nothing of that name exists. In case B, the server does not work with “real” files but actually the request is processed by some other service – e.g. some kind of templating system. Here, the server cannot make any claim about the existence of the resource as it knows nothing about it (unless told by the service handling it).

如果没有来自服务的任何响应显式地要求不同的行为，HTTP服务器只能说3件事:

503，如果处理请求的服务没有运行或响应; 否则，作为HTTP服务器实际上可以满足请求-不管服务稍后会说什么; 400或404表示没有这样的服务(相对于“存在但脱机”)，并且没有找到其他服务。

2

回到手头的问题:我认为最干净的方法是除了前面提到的以外，不使用任何HTTP响应代码。如果服务存在并响应，HTTP代码应该是200。 响应应该在一个单独的报头中包含服务返回的状态——在这里，服务可以说

REST:EMPTY，例如，如果它被要求搜索某物，而该研究返回为空; REST:NOT FOUND，如果它被特别地请求某事物，“ID-like”-是一个文件名或一个ID的资源或条目号24等-并且没有找到特定的资源(通常，一个特定的资源被请求但没有找到); REST:如果发送的请求的任何部分不被服务识别，则为无效。

(注意，我故意用“REST:”作为前缀，以标记这样一个事实，即虽然它们可能具有与HTTP响应代码相同的值或措辞，但它们是完全不同的东西)

3

让我们回到上面的URL并检查用例B，其中服务指示HTTP服务器它不处理这个请求本身，而是将它传递给服务。HTTP只提供SERVICE返回的内容，它不知道任何关于返回/测试部分的内容，因为这是由SERVICE处理的。如果该服务正在运行，HTTP应该返回200，因为它确实找到了处理请求的东西。

SERVICE返回的状态(如上所述，希望在单独的头文件中看到)取决于实际期望的操作:

if return/test asks for a specific resource: if it exists, return it with a status of REST:FOUND; if that resource does not exist, return REST:NOT FOUND; this could be extended to return REST:GONE if we know it once existed and will not return, and REST:MOVED if we know it has gone hollywood if return/test is considered a search or filter-like operation: if the result set is empty, return an empty set in the type requested and a status of REST:EMPTY; a set of results in the type requested and a status of REST:SUCCESS if return/test is not an operation recogized by SERVICE: return REST:ERROR if it is completely wrong (e.g. a typo like retrun/test), or REST:NOT IMPLEMENTED in case it is planned for later.

4

这种区别比把两种不同的东西混在一起要清楚得多。它还将使调试更容易，处理也只是稍微复杂一些。

如果返回一个HTTP 404，服务器会告诉我，“我不知道你在说什么”。虽然请求的REST部分可能完全没问题，但我在所有错误的地方都在寻找par'Mach。 另一方面，HTTP 200和REST:ERR告诉我，我得到了服务，但在对服务的请求中做了错误的事情。 从HTTP 200和REST:EMPTY，我知道我没有做错什么-正确的服务器，服务器找到了服务，正确的请求到服务-但搜索结果是空的。

总结

这个问题和讨论源于这样一个事实:HTTP响应码被用来表示由HTTP提供结果的服务的状态，或者用来表示不在HTTP服务器本身范围内的事物。 由于这种差异，这个问题无法回答，所有的意见都要经过大量的讨论。

由服务而不是HTTP服务器处理的请求的状态真的不应该(RFC 6919)由HTTP响应代码给出。HTTP代码应该(RFC 2119)只包含HTTP服务器从自己的作用域提供的信息:即，是否发现服务在处理请求。

相反，应该使用一种不同的方式将请求的状态告知使用者，以告知实际处理请求的服务。我的建议是通过一个特定的头文件来实现。理想情况下，报头的名称及其内容都遵循一种标准，使使用者可以很容易地处理这些响应。

令人难过的是，如此简单和明确的东西在这个帖子中变成了“基于意见的”。

HTTP服务器只知道“实体”，这是对任何内容的抽象，可以是静态网页、搜索结果列表、其他实体列表、某物的json描述、媒体文件等等。

每个这样的实体都应该由一个唯一的URL来识别，例如。

/user/9——一个单独的实体:user ID=9 /users——单个实体:所有用户的LIST /media/x.mp3——一个单独的实体:一个名为x.mp3的媒体文件 /search—单个实体:基于查询参数的动态CONTENT

如果服务器通过给定的URL找到一个资源，那么它的内容是什么并不重要——2G的数据、null、{}、[]——只要它存在，它就会是200。但是如果服务器不知道这个实体，它将返回404“not Found”。

One confusion seems to be from developers who think if the application has a handler for a certain path shape, it should not be an error. In the eyes of the HTTP protocol it does not matter what happened in the internals of the server (ie. whether the default router responded or a handler for a specific path shape), as long as there is no matching entity on the server to the requested URL (that requested MP3 file, webpage, user object etc), which would return valid contents (empty or otherwise), it must be 404 (or 410 etc).

另一个令人困惑的地方似乎是“没有数据”和“没有实体”。前者是关于实体的内容，后者是关于实体的存在。

示例1:

No data: /users返回200 OK，正文:[]，因为还没有人注册 没有实体:/users返回404，因为没有路径/users

示例2:

No data: /user/9返回返回200 OK，正文:{}，因为用户ID=9从未输入他/她的个人数据 没有实体:/user/9返回404，因为没有用户ID=9

示例3:

No data: /search?name=Joe返回200 OK[]，因为DB中没有Joe 没有实体:/search?name=Joe返回404，因为没有路径/搜索

现有的答案没有详细说明使用路径参数还是查询参数是有区别的。

In case of path parameters, the parameter is part of the resource path. In case of /users/9, the response should be 404 because that resource was not found. /users/9 is the resource, and the result is unary, or an error, it doesn't exist. This is not a monad. In case of query parameters, the parameter is not part of the resource path. In case of /users?id=9, the response should be 204 because the resource /users was found but it could not return any data. The resource /users exists and the result is n-ary, it exists even if it is empty. If id is unique, this is a monad.

使用路径参数还是查询参数取决于用例。我更喜欢将路径参数用于强制的、规范的或标识参数，将查询参数用于可选的、非规范的或属性参数(如分页、排序区域设置等)。在REST API中，我会使用/users/9而不是/users?Id =9，特别是因为可能嵌套获取“子记录”，如/users/9/ SSH -keys/0获取第一个公共SSH密钥或/users/9/address/2获取第三个邮政地址。

我更喜欢使用404。原因如下:

Calls for unary (1 result) and n-ary (n results) methods should not vary for no good reason. I like to have the same response codes if possible. The number of expected results is of course a difference, say, you expect the body to be an object (unary) or an array of objects (n-ary). For n-ary, I would return an array, and in case there are not results, I would not return no set (no document), I would return an empty set (empty document, like empty array in JSON or empty element in XML). That is, it's still 200 but with zero records. There's no reason to put this information on the wire other than in the body. 204 is like a void method. I would not use it for GET, only for POST, PUT, and DELETE. I make an exception in case of GET where the identifiers are query parameters not path parameters. Not finding the record is like NoSuchElementException, ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException or something like that, caused by the client using an id that doesn't exist, so, it's a client error. From a code perspective, getting 204 means an additional branch in the code that could be avoided. It complicates client code, and in some cases it also complicates server code (depending on whether you use entity/model monads or plain entities/models; and I strongly recommend staying away from entity/model monads, it can lead to nasty bugs where because of the monad you think an operation is successful and return 200 or 204 when you should actually have returned something else). Client code is easier to write and understand if 2xx means the server did what the client requested, and 4xx means the server didn't do what the client requested and it's the client's fault. Not giving the client the record that the client requested by id is the client's fault, because the client requested an id that doesn't exist.

最后一点:一致性

GET /用户/ 9 PUT /users/9和DELETE /users/9

PUT /users/9和DELETE /users/9已经必须在成功更新或删除的情况下返回204。如果用户9不存在，它们应该返回什么?根据所使用的HTTP方法将相同的情况显示为不同的状态代码是没有意义的。

Besides, not a normative, but a cultural reason: If 204 is used for GET /users/9 next thing that will happen in the project is that somebody thinks returning 204 is good for n-ary methods. And that complicates client code, because instead of just checking for 2xx and then decoding the body, the client now has to specifically check for 204 and in that case skip decoding the body. Bud what does the client do instead? Create an empty array? Why not have that on the wire, then? If the client creates the empty array, 204 is a form of stupid compression. If the client uses null instead, a whole different can of worms is opened.