Why I Built http-status-toolkit — A Better Alternative to http-status-codes

In my backend projects, I got tired of constantly writing raw status code numbers like:

res.status(200)
res.status(404)

It works — but it’s not expressive. And honestly, it makes code harder to read and maintain over time. Like many developers, I wanted something cleaner, more intuitive, and easier to understand at a glance.

So I looked into existing solutions.

🚫 First I Tried `http-status-codes`

http-status-codes is a well-known package. With it, you can write:

import { StatusCodes } from "http-status-codes";
res.status(StatusCodes.OK);

Much better than hardcoded numbers — but it came with a few drawbacks:

❌ No ESM support
❌ No localization
❌ No detailed reason phrases
❌ Separate type definitions (@types/http-status-codes)
❌ Slightly bloated — 12+ KB minified

It didn’t quite solve my problems. So I kept looking.

😐 Then I Tried `http-status`

http-status is another popular choice. It does support both CommonJS and ESM out of the box — nice. But it still had some limitations:

❌ No localization or i18n support
❌ Only short, generic messages
❌ No detailed descriptions for each code
❌ Lacks modern TypeScript typings
❌ Not tree-shakable

So again — better than nothing, but not enough.

✅ So I Built `http-status-toolkit`

I created http-status-toolkit to solve all of the above. It’s modern, lightweight, and built for real-world developer needs.

Here’s what it offers:

✅ TypeScript-first with full type safety and autocompletion
✅ ESM and CommonJS support
✅ Short + detailed human-readable messages
✅ Localization support in 10+ languages
✅ Tree-shakable and subpath exportable
✅ Built with tsup for clean, modern builds
✅ Extremely lightweight: ~4.1 KB minified / ~2.2 KB gzipped

🧪 Example Usage

import { StatusCodes, getStatusMessage } from "http-status-toolkit";

console.log(StatusCodes.OK); 
// 200

console.log(getStatusMessage(StatusCodes.NOT_FOUND)); 
// "Not Found"

// Detailed message
import DetailedMessages from "http-status-toolkit/messages-detailed";
console.log(getStatusMessage(StatusCodes.NOT_FOUND, { variant: DetailedMessages }));
// "Not Found: The requested resource could not be found but may be available in the future."

// Localized message (Bengali)
import BengaliMessages from 'http-status-toolkit/messages-bn';
console.log(getStatusMessage(StatusCodes.NOT_FOUND, { variant: BengaliMessages }));
// Output: (Not Found message in Bengali)

📊 Feature Comparison

📦 Bundle size is based on Bundlephobia

💡 Why It Matters

http-status-toolkit improves:

Readability: No more res.status(403) — use StatusCodes.FORBIDDEN
Clarity: Choose between short, detailed, or localized messages
Internationalization: Easily display meaningful error responses in your users’ languages
Developer Experience: Clean API, tree-shakable, and TypeScript-native

🧭 Want to Explore?

Built with ❤️ and TypeScript by Rashedin Islam

If you find it useful, consider giving it a ⭐ on GitHub.

Source: DEV Community.

Why I Built http-status-toolkit — A Better Alternative to http-status-codes

🚫 First I Tried http-status-codes

😐 Then I Tried http-status

✅ So I Built http-status-toolkit