200 OK and 201 Created in Rest API - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Understanding 200 OK and 201 Created in REST API

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple REST API for managing a list of books in a library. The API should respond correctly when a client requests the list of books or adds a new book.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to send proper HTTP status codes 200 OK when returning data and 201 Created when a new resource is created.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of books as initial data

Add a configuration variable for the new book to add

Write the core logic to handle GET and POST requests with correct status codes

Print the HTTP status code and response message

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

APIs use status codes like 200 and 201 to tell clients if their requests succeeded or if new data was created.

💼 Career

Understanding HTTP status codes is essential for backend developers and anyone working with web services.

1

Create initial book list

Create a list called books with these exact dictionaries: {'id': 1, 'title': '1984'} and {'id': 2, 'title': 'Brave New World'}.

Rest API

# Create the list of books
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a list with two dictionaries inside, each dictionary has keys 'id' and 'title'.

2

Add new book data

Create a dictionary called new_book with 'id': 3 and 'title': 'Fahrenheit 451'.

Rest API

books = [{'id': 1, 'title': '1984'}, {'id': 2, 'title': 'Brave New World'}]
# Create the new_book dictionary
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a dictionary with keys 'id' and 'title' exactly as shown.

3

Implement GET and POST logic

Write a function called handle_request that takes a parameter method. If method is 'GET', return a tuple (200, books). If method is 'POST', append new_book to books and return (201, new_book).

Rest API

books = [{'id': 1, 'title': '1984'}, {'id': 2, 'title': 'Brave New World'}]
new_book = {'id': 3, 'title': 'Fahrenheit 451'}

# Define handle_request function
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use if and elif to check the method, then return the correct status code and data.

4

Print the response for GET and POST

Call handle_request with 'GET' and print the status code and data. Then call it with 'POST' and print the status code and data.

Rest API

books = [{'id': 1, 'title': '1984'}, {'id': 2, 'title': 'Brave New World'}]
new_book = {'id': 3, 'title': 'Fahrenheit 451'}

def handle_request(method):
    if method == 'GET':
        return 200, books
    elif method == 'POST':
        books.append(new_book)
        return 201, new_book

# Call handle_request with 'GET' and print
# Call handle_request with 'POST' and print
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Call the function twice with 'GET' and 'POST' and print the results using f-strings.