[benrow]

I like the convention:

- 404 if resource requested by id

- 200 with empty list of results if it was a 'search' type request with params (not referring directly to an id)

[Banditoz]

What about 204? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/204

[benrow]

I still prefer 200 with an empty list for the 'no results' case. The same client code works, rather than having to code for 204.

- If I query for an identifier which doesn't exist - Server replies 404, this should fall into my error handling as there's a data inconsistency

- If I query say like ?category=automotive&price=1 and I get a 200 containing a json body in which there's an empty list of matches, then my client code can handle 0 matches as well as 1 or 10 with no special handling.

[tuetuopay]

this is the standard we have company-wide and it works pretty well, unless you make a mistake in the uri (like picking up the wrong api version). however, all apis will return some info on their root, so it's easy to distinguish and troubleshoot