< HTTP/1.1 205 Reset Content

TL;DR: 205 Reset Content means “done, there is no body, and the client should reset the view that sent this request” (clear the form). It is defined in RFC 9110 but almost never used, and browsers do not reliably act on it, so reset the form in your own JavaScript.

What it means

It is the sibling of 204 No Content. The difference is the instruction to the user agent: with 204 keep the view as is, with 205 return it to its pre-interaction state. The intended use is a data-entry form that posts to a server and, on success, is cleared so the user can enter the next record.

POST /entries HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

name=Alice&amount=40

HTTP/1.1 205 Reset Content
Content-Length: 0

Rules from RFC 9110 §15.3.6:

• The server must not generate content in a 205. Sending Content-Length: 0 (or Transfer-Encoding with an empty last chunk) tells the client the message ends, so it does not hang waiting.
• A client should reset the view without reloading.
• 205 is not cacheable by default.

What happens in practice

• Browsers. Behaviour for form submissions differs by browser and by how the request was made, and a form POST that returns 205 often just leaves the page where it was. Do not build features on it.
• fetch and XHR. Both pass the status through. In fetch, 205 is one of the Fetch Standard’s null body statuses (101, 103, 204, 205, 304), so response.body is null and response.text() resolves to an empty string. response.ok is true.
• Mocking trap. new Response('ok', { status: 205 }) throws TypeError: Failed to construct 'Response': Response with null body status cannot have body in Chromium, so test mocks must use new Response(null, { status: 205 }).
• Proxies. Some intermediaries mishandle bodies on 1xx/204/205 and add Content-Length/chunked framing that confuses clients. Make sure your server really sends none.

Because the client does the reset anyway if you tell it to, most APIs return 204 or 201 and let the frontend clear its state:

const res = await fetch('/entries', { method: 'POST', body: new FormData(form) })
if (res.ok) form.reset()   // works for 200, 201, 204, 205 alike

Try it with curl

Submit a form and look for a body-less 205. The server must send no content with this status, so expect Content-Length: 0.

curl -i -X POST https://example.com/comments -d 'text=hello'

Example output (illustrative, not captured from a real server):

HTTP/1.1 205 Reset Content
Content-Length: 0

curl just prints the status. Whether a browser actually resets the form is client-specific, so do not rely on 205 for UI behavior without testing.

Related

• 204 No Content
• 200 OK
• 201 Created
• Status codes overview