Multi-Status

Overview

207 Multi-Status is a WebDAV response that reports individual statuses for several resources in one XML body when a single request affects many of them. The overall request succeeded with 200, but each inner item may have a different outcome.

For example, a PROPFIND over a whole folder or a batch delete may return 200 for some items and 423 Locked or 404 for others, each reported separately.

When it happens

• It is returned for WebDAV operations that touch many child resources at once — PROPFIND, PROPPATCH, COPY, MOVE, DELETE.
• WebDAV extensions such as CalDAV/CardDAV also use it to return results for multi-item queries.

Request / Response example

PROPFIND /collection/ HTTP/1.1
Host: dav.example.com
Depth: 1
Content-Type: application/xml

<propfind><prop><getlastmodified/></prop></propfind>

HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status
Content-Type: application/xml

<multistatus xmlns="DAV:">
  <response><href>/collection/a.txt</href><status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</status></response>
  <response><href>/collection/locked.txt</href><status>HTTP/1.1 423 Locked</status></response>
</multistatus>

In code

HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status
Content-Type: application/xml; charset=utf-8

<multistatus xmlns="DAV:">...</multistatus>

Notes

• Even though the status line is 207, you must parse each response/status inside the XML body to learn the real outcome — a 207 does not mean every item succeeded.
• The body is an application/xml multistatus document and is almost never used in ordinary REST APIs.

Related status codes

Related headers

Specification