Django HttpResponse Subclasses and Custom Response Classes

You've raised an interesting point about consistency in Django's HttpResponse subclasses. Based on the Django 5.1 documentation, Django does indeed provide several HttpResponse subclasses for common HTTP status codes, including:

• HttpResponseRedirect (302)
• HttpResponsePermanentRedirect (301)
• HttpResponseNotModified (304)
• HttpResponseBadRequest (400)
• HttpResponseNotFound (404)
• HttpResponseForbidden (403)
• HttpResponseNotAllowed (405)
• HttpResponseGone (410)
• HttpResponseServerError (500)

However, Django also explicitly documents how to create custom response classes when needed:

PYTHONCopied
from http import HTTPStatus
from django.http import HttpResponse

class HttpResponseNoContent(HttpResponse):
    status_code = HTTPStatus.NO_CONTENT

This example specifically shows how to create an HttpResponseNoContent class for 204 responses, which is one of the classes you proposed.

The current approach seems to be that Django provides built-in subclasses for the most commonly used status codes, while encouraging developers to create their own subclasses for less common ones using the http.HTTPStatus enum for clarity and maintainability.

Your point about consistency is valid - if Django provides subclasses for some status codes, it would be reasonable to include others that are commonly used in RESTful APIs, such as 201 (Created) and 204 (No Content). The decision to include certain status codes but not others may have historical reasons rather than technical ones.

If you want to continue advocating for these additions, you might consider:

1. Gathering usage statistics to demonstrate how common these status codes are in modern Django applications
2. Highlighting the inconsistency in the current approach
3. Emphasizing the benefits for new developers (discoverability, consistency, self-documentation)

In the meantime, the documented approach of creating your own subclasses using http.HTTPStatus is the recommended way to handle these responses.