HTTP Status Codes

The FamilySearch API makes full use of existing standards for HTTP status codes. The following table contains explanations of what the status codes mean in the context of the FamilySearch API.

Status	Message	Example Request	Description
200	OK	Read Person	The request was successful. This is usually returned when making a simple GET request.
201	Created	Person Create	A new resource was successfully created, such as a person, relationship, or source.
204	No Content	Update Person Conclusion	The request was successful but nothing was created and nothing was available to return. This occurs when updating a resource (such as a person) or when asking for a list of resources that is empty (no search results or no relationships).
301	Moved Permanently	Merge Person	The requested resource was merged into another resource. When this occurs, a Location header and a X-Entity-Forwarded-Id header that point to the new resource will be provided.
303	See Other	Read Current User Person	A resource was requested that always forwards to an another resource, such as Current User Person and Preferred Spouse Relationship.
304	Not Modified	Caching The Person	This is provided as the result of a successful conditional GET.
307	Temporary Redirect	Person Portait	This is provided as the result of a successful GET to a resource that has an alternative URL.
400	Bad Request	Search Persons With Warnings and Errors	An invalid request was made. A Warning header is usually returned to explain what went wrong. Common causes are malformed XML or JSON, correctly formatted XML or JSON with incorrect data (such as a date with no original value), or an incorrectly formatted search or match query.
401	Unauthorized		The user is not properly authenticated. Either the access token was not sent or the token has expired.
403	Forbidden		A resource was requested that the user does not have permission to access.
404	Not Found	Read Not Found Person	A resource was requested that does not exist. You may have an incorrect URI or are requesting a resource that was deleted. This may also be provided when requesting notes, sources, or discussions for a person who is living.
404	Not Found on Accelerator		The request was not understood by the networking and routing infrastructure. It is usually caused by improper or unusual formatting of HTTP headers. Please contact developer support to help resolve the issue.
405	Method Not Allowed		The HTTP method being used (such as GET or POST) is not supported by the resource. Review the docs for the resource to see which methods are allowed.
406	Not Acceptable		An invalid content type is being used in the Accept header. Review the valid list of content types in the resource's documentation.
409	Conflict		This is returned when attempting to create a relationship that already exists, a conclusion that already exists, or if an attempt is made to update the same resource at the same time as somebody else and the other update was applied first.
410	Gone	Read Deleted Person	The resource you are requesting or operating on has been deleted. In the case of GET requests, the resource is still provided in the body of the request.
412	Precondition Failed		The server wasn't able to fulfill the precondition given in one or more of the request-header fields.
415	Unsupported Media Type		You specified an invalid data format (media type) in the Content-Type header.
417	Expectation Failed		The server wasn't able to fulfill the expectation provided by the Expect header. Probably a bug; report the error.
429	Too Many Requests		The user is being rate limited because the user has used too much processing time recently.
500	Internal Server Error		An unexpected error occurred on the server-side. FamilySearch monitors server logs and addresses all identified issues, but we encourage you to report the error.
503	Service Unavailable		A needed service is unavailable. FamilySearch monitors server logs and addresses all identified issues, but we encourage you to report the error.
504	Gateway Timeout		A request to a needed service failed to respond within a specified time period. Report the error if the 504 persists for a specific resource for longer than an hour.