I am working on a API which requests deletion of a resource. If the resource is in use i.e. has a reference with some other type of resource then it's not allowed to delete it. Also its highly unlikely that the resources in use will ever be freed up and would be eligible for deletion in future. What should be the response code of DELETE API in such scenarios ?
2 Answers
If disallowing deletion of a resource under certain circumstances is a business rule that the client should be aware of, an appropriate return code would be 400 (Bad request).
If the client can resolve the issue through action, by e.g. deleting the referencing resource first, another more specific code might be 409 (Conflict).
In either case the server should provide an explanation to the client as per https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7231#section-6.5.
According to RFC-7231 (6.5.5) the 405 (Method Not Allowed) response code is cacheable and therefore might not be suitable for an endpoint where the chances of a subsequent request returning a different response code is merely 'highly unlikely' rather than impossible (according to the systems rules).
the 500 class of codes would not be appropriate becuase these indicate that deletion of the resource should be possible (according to the systems rules), but that the server was incapable of doing it for some reason. see RFC-7231 (6.6)
mark the resource as deleted on the server side (e.g. flag) and return 202 Accepted - The request has been accepted for processing, but the processing has not been completed. The request might or might not be eventually acted upon, and may be disallowed when processing occurs.
If it blocks further actions on the client i'd suggest 500 - internal error
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