Status codes

What the number means

The status code is the server telling you which of you has a problem.

Range	Meaning	Whose problem
2xx	it worked	—
3xx	it moved	usually handled for you
4xx	your request was wrong	yours
5xx	the server broke	theirs

The ones worth knowing by name: 200 OK, 201 Created, 400 Bad Request, 401 Unauthorized, 403 Forbidden, 404 Not Found, 429 Too Many Requests, 500 Internal Server Error, 503 Service Unavailable.

The distinction that matters operationally: 4xx will fail again if you retry it — your request is wrong and repeating it changes nothing. 5xx and 429 are worth retrying, because the server might recover.

response.raise_for_status() turns a 4xx or 5xx into an exception, which is useful when you would rather crash than continue with nonsense.

Your turn: write classify(status) returning "ok", "client error", "server error" or "other", and should_retry(status) returning True only for 5xx and 429.

def classify(status):
    pass


def should_retry(status):
    pass