HTTP examples

This reading explores the contents of HTTP requests and responses in more depth.

Request Line

Every HTTP request begins with the request line.

This consists of the HTTP method, the requested resource and the HTTP protocol version.

GET /home.html HTTP/1.1

In this example, GET is the HTTP method, /home.html is the resource requested and HTTP 1.1 is the protocol used.

HTTP Methods

HTTP methods indicate the action that the client wishes to perform on the web server resource.

Common HTTP methods are:

HTTP Method	Description
GET	The client requests a resource on the web server.
POST	The client submits data to a resource on the web server.
PUT	The client replaces a resource on the web server.
DELETE	The client deletes a resource on the web server.

HTTP Request Headers

After the request line, the HTTP headers are followed by a line break.

There are various possibilities when including an HTTP header in the HTTP request. A header is a case-insensitive name followed by a**:** and then followed by a value.

Common headers are:

Host: example.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:50.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/50.0
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en
Content-type: text/json

The Host header specifies the host of the server and indicates where the resource is requested from.
The User-Agent header informs the web server of the application that is making the request. It often includes the operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux), version and application vendor.
The Accept header informs the web server what type of content the client will accept as the response.