How to change status of JsonResponse in Django

My API is returning a JSON object on error but the status code is HTTP 200:

response = JsonResponse({'status': 'false', 'message': message})
return response

How can I change the response code to indicate an error?

Solution 1:

JsonResponse normally returns HTTP 200, which is the status code for 'OK'. In order to indicate an error, you can add an HTTP status code to JsonResponse as it is a subclass of HttpResponse:

response = JsonResponse({'status':'false','message':message}, status=500)

Solution 2:

Return an actual status

JsonResponse(status=404, data={'status':'false','message':message})

Solution 3:

Python built-in http library has new class called HTTPStatus which is come from Python 3.5 onward. You can use it when define a status.

from http import HTTPStatus
response = JsonResponse({'status':'false','message':message}, status=HTTPStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR)

The value of HTTPStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR.value is 500. When someone read your code it's better define someting like HTTPStatus.<STATUS_NAME> other than define an integer value like 500. You can view all the IANA-registered status codes from python library here.