Reference guide · http-status · Published 2026-08-16 · 2 min read
HTTP 102 Processing status explained
HTTP 102 Processing is an informational status once used to prevent WebDAV request timeouts while a request was being processed. Learn when 102 applies today.
- ·What 102 does
- ·Where it came from
- ·Modern relevance
What 102 does
HTTP 102 Processing is an informational (1xx) status originally defined to keep a connection alive while a server was still processing a request. It was created for WebDAV, where some operations such as locking many resources or copying a huge collection can take a long time. Without 102, an intermediate proxy between the client and server might time out waiting for the first byte of the response and tear down the connection before the server finished.
By sending 102 Processing early, the server told the client and any proxies "I am still working, keep the connection open". The client was expected to wait, then receive the final status once the operation completed.
Where it came from
102 was introduced in RFC 2518, the WebDAV specification from 1999. WebDAV exposes methods like PROPFIND, LOCK, UNLOCK, COPY and MOVE that operate across whole directory trees, and a collection-wide DELETE or COPY could legitimately run for long enough that a naive HTTP client or proxy would give up. The status existed purely to buy time on those long operations.
A closely related WebDAV status is 207 Multi-Status, which bundles the per-resource results of a bulk operation into a single body. Where 207 carries the outcome, 102 carried only "still processing".
Modern relevance
102 Processing was kept as a legacy status code in the IANA registry after the consolidated HTTP specifications replaced the original RFCs, but it is not a standard code in the modern HTTP picture, and modern servers and clients generally do not need it.
Why it faded: HTTP/1.1 and the newer specifications explicitly allow a server to send informational responses to keep a connection alive, and the practice of separating processing from response is better handled by streaming and asynchronous request patterns. WebDAV servers that used 102 have largely moved on, so you are unlikely to encounter the status in current traffic.
Its place in the informational family is now taken by HTTP 103 Early Hints, which tells a client which subresources it can fetch while the final response is still being prepared. The distinction matters if you are choosing what an "informational" status means today: see HTTP 103 Early Hints for the active member of the family, and the status code list to place 1xx together with the rest.