What is the proper REST response code for a valid request but an empty data?

The answer, therefore, to your question is use 404 in your case. 204 is a specialized reponse code that you shouldn't often return to a browser in response to a GET.

Wikipedia's description of the HTTP status codes are particularly helpful. You can also see the definitions in the HTTP/1.1 RFC2616 document at www.w3.org

The request was received and properly processed - it did trigger application code on the server, thus one cannot really say that it was a client error and thus the whole class of client error codes (4xx) is not fitting.

More importantly, 404 can happen for a number of technical reasons. E.g. the application being temporarily deactivated or uninstalled on the server, proxy connection issues and whatnot. Therefore the client cannot distinguish between a 404 that means "empty result set" and a 404 that means "the service cannot be found, try again later".

This can be fatal: Imagine an accounting service in your company that lists all the employees that are due to an annual bonus. Unfortunately, the one time when it is called it returns a 404. Does that mean that no-one is due for a bonus, or that the application is currently down for a new deployment?

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