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Software Engineering vocabulary · APIs, Networking and Security

Response

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/rɪˈspɑːns/nounCore term

In software engineering, response means: The message a server or API sends back after receiving a request, usually containing a status code, headers and data such as JSON.

In Turkish: yanıt, cevap

How it is used

Developers inspect, parse and log responses. 'Response time' is how long the server takes to answer, an important performance measure. An 'empty response' or 'unexpected response' usually means something went wrong on the other side.

Example sentences

  1. The response comes back as JSON, but the date field is sometimes missing.

  2. Average response time went up to 900 milliseconds after the last deploy.

Common collocations

  • response time
  • response body
  • parse the response
  • empty response
  • API response
  • requestA message that a client sends to a server or API, asking it to do something such as return data or save a new record.
  • status codeA three-digit number in an HTTP response that tells the client what happened, such as 200 for success, 404 for not found or 500 for a server error.
  • payloadThe actual data carried by a request, response or message, as opposed to the headers and other information around it.
  • JSONShort for JavaScript Object Notation: a simple text format for data, made of key-value pairs and lists, used by most web APIs.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: APIs, Networking and Security

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