How to send a custom http status message in node / express?

by

None of the existing answers accomplish what the OP originally asked for, which is to override the default Reason-Phrase (the text appearing immediately after the status code) sent by Express.

What you want is res.statusMessage. This is not part of Express, it’s a property of the underlying http.Response object in Node.js 0.11+.

You can use it like this (tested in Express 4.x):

function(req, res) {
    res.statusMessage = "Current password does not match";
    res.status(400).end();
}

Then use curl to verify that it works:

$ curl -i -s http://localhost:3100/
HTTP/1.1 400 Current password does not match
X-Powered-By: Express
Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2016 19:04:35 GMT
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 0

Leave a Comment