Can an HTTP OPTIONS request return a 204 or should it always return 200?

Question

According to http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec9.html#sec9.2 the only response ever mentioned regarding an HTTP OPTIONS request is a 200. However, there seem to

Answer 1

Yes, it can return 204. Or 400. Or 404. There is no general restriction as to what status codes a method can return.

Also note that it's time to stop looking at RFC 2616. See http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/wiki.