HTTP 202 Accepted indicates that the request has been accepted for processing, but the processing has not been completed and may not have even started. It is intentionally non-committal — the server promises only that it received the request, not that it will succeed. This status is essential for asynchronous API patterns where operations take seconds to minutes (video transcoding, report generation, batch imports) and blocking the HTTP connection would be impractical.
Response includes the status code, standard headers (including Content-Type), and a small diagnostic JSON body describing the request and returned status.
Simulator URL (copy in the app after load — not a normal link):
https://httpstatus.com/api/status/202
Example request:
curl -i "https://httpstatus.com/api/status/202"