What HTTP status response code should I use if the request is missing a required parameter?

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Status 422 seems most appropiate based on the spec.

The 422 (Unprocessable Entity) status code means the server
understands the content type of the request entity (hence a
415(Unsupported Media Type) status code is inappropriate), and the
syntax of the request entity is correct (thus a 400 (Bad Request)
status code is inappropriate) but was unable to process the contained
instructions. For example, this error condition may occur if an XML
request body contains well-formed (i.e., syntactically correct), but
semantically erroneous, XML instructions.

They state that malformed xml is an example of bad syntax (calling for a 400). A malformed query string seems analogous to this, so 400 doesn’t seem appropriate for a well-formed query-string which is missing a param.

Note: Since the above RFC is about WebDAV there can be a misunderstanding that 422 and some others are only to be used in the context of WebDAV and using them outside of it is “nonstandard”. But this only means these status codes were introduced in the context of this RFC. Indeed the wording of these definitions is carefully chosen not to be specific to WebDAV.

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