HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol

HTTP messages HTTP is the language that web clients and web servers use to talk to each other –HTTP is largely “under the hood,” but a basic understanding can be helpful Each message, whether a request or a response, has three parts: 1.The request or the response line 2.A header section 3.The body of the message

What the client does, part I The client sends a message to the server at a particular port (80 is the default) The first part of the message is the request line, containing: –A method (HTTP command) such as GET or POST –A document address, and –An HTTP version number Example: –GET /index.html HTTP/1.0

Other methods Other methods beside GET and POST are: –HEAD : Like GET, but ask that only a header be returned –PUT : Request to store the entity-body at the URI –DELETE : Request removal of data at the URI –LINK : Request header information be associated with a document on the server –UNLINK : Request to undo a LINK request –OPTIONS : Request information about communications options on the server –TRACE : Request that the entity-body be returned as received (used for debugging)

What the client does, part II The second part of a request is optional header information, such as: –What the client software is –What formats it can accept All information is in the form Name: Value Example: User-Agent: Mozilla/2.02Gold (WinNT; I) Accept: image/gif, image/jpeg, */* A blank line ends the header

Client request headers Accept: type/subtype, type/subtype,... –Specifies media types that the client prefers to accept Accept-Language: en, fr, de –Preferred language (For example: English, French, German) User-Agent: string –The browser or other client program sending the request From: – address of user of client program Cookie: name=value –Information about a cookie for that URL –Multiple cookies can be separated by commas

What the client does, part III The third part of a request (after the blank line) is the entity-body, which contains optional data –The entity-body part is used mostly by POST requests –The entity-body part is always empty for a GET request

What the server does, part I The server response is also in three parts The first part is the status line, which tells: –The HTTP version –A status code –A short description of what the status code means Example: HTTP/ Not Found Status codes are in groups: Informational The request was successful The request was redirected The request failed A server error occurred

Common status codes 200 OK –Everything worked, here’s the data 301 Moved Permanently –URI was moved, but here’s the new address for your records 302 Moved temporarily –URL temporarily out of service, keep the old one but use this one for now 400 Bad Request –There is a xyntax error in your request 403 Forbidden –You can’t do this, and we won’t tell you why 404 Not Found –No such document 408 Request Time-out, 504 Gateway Time-out –Request took too long to fulfill for some reason

What the server does, part II The second part of the response is header information, ended by a blank line Example: Content-Length: 2532 Connection: Close Server: GWS/2.0 Date: Sun, 01 Dec :24:50 GMT Content-Type: text/html Cache-control: private Set-Cookie: PREF=ID=05302a93093ec661:TM= :LM= :S= yNWNjraftUz299RH; expires=Sun, 17-Jan :14:07 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com All on one line There is a nice header viewer at

Server response headers Server: NCSA/1.3 –Name and version of the server Content-Type: type/subtype –Should be of a type and subtype specified by the client’s Accept header Set-Cookie: name=value; options –Requests the client to store a cookie with the given name and value

What the server does, part III The third part of a server response is the entity body This is often an HTML page –But it can also be a jpeg, a gif, plain text, etc.--anything the browser (or other client) is prepared to accept

The tag The tag may occur in the of an HTML document http-equiv and content typically have the same kinds of values as in the HTTP header This tag asks the client to pretend that the information actually occurred in the header –The information is not really in the header –As usual, not all browsers handle this information the same way Example:

Summary HTTP is a fairly straightforward protocol with a lot of possible kinds of predefined header information –More kinds can be added, so long as client and server agree A request from the client consists of three parts: 1.A header line 2.A block of header information, ending with a blank line 3.The (optional) entity body, containing data A response from the server consists of the same three parts HTTP headers are “under the hood” information, not normally displayed to the user As with most of the things covered in CIT597, –We have covered only the fundamentals –Much more detail can be found on the Web

The End