HTTP protocol

what is HTTP?

  • HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol.
  • The HTTP protocol can be used to transfer the data in the form of plain text, hypertext, audio, video, etc on the internet.

features of HTTP

  • HTTP is connectionless
    • The HTTP client, i.e., a browser initiates an HTTP request and after a request is made, the client waits for the response.
    • Server processes the request and returns the response.
    • Once response is recieved then HTTP client disconnects the connection.
  • HTTP is media independent
    • The client has to specify the media type in the request
    • Then server will understand the media request and processes it.
  • HTTP is stateless
    • The server and client are aware of each other only during a current request. Afterwards, both of them forget about each other.

HTTP protocol

HTTP Request

  • It has two parts HTTP request headers and HTTP request body

HTTP request headers

  • The request looks something like below
http://127.0.0.1/login/
POST /login/ HTTP/1.1

Host: 127.0.0.1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:18.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/18.0
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
DNT: 1
Referer: http://127.0.0.1/login/
Cookie: passx=87e8af376bc9d9bfec2c7c0193e6af70; PHPSESSID=l9hk7mfh0ppqecg8gialak6gt5
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Type: multipart/form-data

HTTP request body

  • HTTP Message Body is the data bytes transmitted in an HTTP transaction message immediately following the headers if there are any.

HTTP response:

  • It also has two parts HTTP response headers and HTTP response body

HTTP response headers

200 OK
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2016 16:06:00 GMT
Etag: "c561c68d0ba92bbeb8b0f612a9199f722e3a621a"
Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=997
Last-Modified: Mon, 18 Jul 2016 02:36:04 GMT

HTTP response body

  • The last part of a response is the body. Not all responses have one: responses with a status code that sufficiently answers the request without the need for corresponding payload (like 201 Created or 204 No Content) usually don't.

HTTP status codes

  • Informational responses (100 – 199)
  • Successful responses (200 – 299)
  • Redirection messages (300 – 399)
  • Client error responses (400 – 499)
  • Server error responses (500 – 599)
Status code Meaning
1xx Informational
100 Continue
101 Switching protocols
102 Processing
103 Early Hints
2xx Succesful
200 OK
201 Created
202 Accepted
203 Non-Authoritative Information
204 No Content
205 Reset Content
206 Partial Content
207 Multi-Status
208 Already Reported
226 IM Used
3xx Redirection
300 Multiple Choices
301 Moved Permanently
302 Found (Previously "Moved Temporarily")
303 See Other
304 Not Modified
305 Use Proxy
306 Switch Proxy
307 Temporary Redirect
308 Permanent Redirect
4xx Client Error
400 Bad Request
401 Unauthorized
402 Payment Required
403 Forbidden
404 Not Found
405 Method Not Allowed
406 Not Acceptable
407 Proxy Authentication Required
408 Request Timeout
409 Conflict
410 Gone
411 Length Required
412 Precondition Failed
413 Payload Too Large
414 URI Too Long
415 Unsupported Media Type
416 Range Not Satisfiable
417 Expectation Failed
418 I'm a Teapot
421 Misdirected Request
422 Unprocessable Entity
423 Locked
424 Failed Dependency
425 Too Early
426 Upgrade Required
428 Precondition Required
429 Too Many Requests
431 Request Header Fields Too Large
451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons
5xx Server Error
500 Internal Server Error
501 Not Implemented
502 Bad Gateway
503 Service Unavailable
504 Gateway Timeout
505 HTTP Version Not Supported
506 Variant Also Negotiates
507 Insufficient Storage
508 Loop Detected
510 Not Extended
511 Network Authentication Required

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