What is Status codes in Laravel, and what role does it play in a real application?

What is Status codes in Laravel, and what role does it play in a real application? In Laravel, status codes should be understood as part of a larger application architecture rather than as an isolated API call. API endpoints should return meaningful HTTP status codes that clients can interpret. A strong understanding includes its purpose, the layer where it belongs, the data or request flow it affects, and the situations where another mechanism may be more appropriate. Practical context: Laravel can expose HTTP APIs through routes that map HTTP verbs and resource URLs to controller actions or other handlers. The specific focus here is status codes: API endpoints should return meaningful HTTP status codes that clients can interpret. This question is designed to test not only terminology, but also how the concept fits into Laravel's request, application, database, security, or deployment workflow.