HttpExchange.sendResponseHeaders takes two parameters - the int responseCode and a long parameter which specifies the content length.

The content-length parameter is counter intuitive where the value 0 means use chunked encoding, whereas the value -1 (or any value < 0) means no content.

A simple improvement could be to add two symbolic constant values to HttpExchange such as:

public static final long NO_CONTENT = -1L;

and

public static final long CHUNKED_CONTENT = 0L;

A convenience method for sending no content could be added such as:


public final void sendResponseHeadersNoContent(int code)

An apiNote can be added to the existing sendResponseHeaders method referring to the constants and the new method