HTTP Basics

1. What is HTTP?

HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is the foundation of data communication on the World Wide Web. It is a protocol used for transmitting hypertext via the internet.

Key Takeaways:

• HTTP is stateless, meaning each request is independent.
• HTTP operates on a client-server model.
• It is primarily used for fetching resources like HTML documents.

2. HTTP Methods

HTTP defines several request methods that indicate the desired action to be performed on the identified resource.

1. GET: Retrieve data from the server.
2. POST: Send data to the server to create/update a resource.
3. PUT: Update a resource entirely.
4. DELETE: Remove a resource from the server.
5. HEAD: Similar to GET but retrieves only headers.
6. OPTIONS: Describe the communication options for the target resource.

3. HTTP Status Codes

HTTP status codes are issued by a server in response to a client's request made to the server. They indicate the outcome of the server's attempt to process the request.

Common Status Codes:

• 200 OK: The request was successful.
• 404 Not Found: The requested resource could not be found.
• 500 Internal Server Error: An error occurred on the server.

4. HTTP Headers

HTTP headers are key-value pairs sent between the client and server that provide essential information about the request or response.

Example of HTTP request headers:

GET /index.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5

Example of HTTP response headers:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Length: 1234

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