HyperText Transfer Protocol


he HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a protocol (a set of rules that describe how information is exchanged on a network) that allows a web browser and a web server to "talk" to each other using the ISO Latin1 alphabet, which is ASCII with extensions for European languages.

 HTTP is based on a request/response model. The client connects to the server and sends a request to the server. The request contains the following: request method, URI, and protocol version. The client then sends some header information. The server's response includes the return of the protocol version, status code, followed by a header that contains server information, and then the requested data. The connection is then closed.

The Netscape Enterprise Server 3.0 supports HTTP 1.1. Previous versions of the server supported HTTP 1.0. The server is conditionally compliant with the HTTP 1.1 proposed standard, as approved by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) HTTP working group. For more information on the criteria for being conditionally compliant, see the Hypertext Transfer Protocol--HTTP/1.1 specification (RFC 2068) at:

 

http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/http-charter.html
This chapter provides a short introduction to a few HTTP basics. For more information on HTTP, see the IETF home page at
http://www.ietf.org/home.html.

 

Requests

A request from a client to a server includes the following information:

 

 

Request method

A client can request information using a number of methods. Commonly used methods include the following:

 

 

Request header

The client can send header fields to the server. Most are optional. Some commonly used request headers are shown in Table A.1.
Common request headers 

 

Request header 

 

Description 

 

Accept 

 

The file types the client can accept. 

 

Authorization 

 

Used if the client wants to authenticate itself with a server; information such as the username and password are included. 

 

User-agent 

 

The name and version of the client software. 
Referer 

 

The URL of the document where the user clicked on the link. 

 

Host 

 

The Internet host and port number of the resource being requested. 

 

 
 

Request data

If the client has made a POST or PUT request, it can send data after the request header and a blank line. If the client sends a GET or HEAD request, there is no data to send; the client waits for the server's response.

  

Responses

The server's response includes the following:

 

 

Status code

When a client makes a request, one item the server sends back is a status code, which is a three-digit numeric code. There are four categories of status codes:

 

Table A.2 contains some common status codes.
Common HTTP status codes 

 

Status code 

 

Meaning 

 

200 

 

OK; successful transmission. This is not an error. 

 

302 

 

Found. Redirection to a new URL. The original URL has moved. This is not an error; most browsers will get the new page. 

 

304 

 

Use a local copy. If a browser already has a page in its cache, and the page is requested again, some browsers (such as Netscape Navigator) relay to the web server the "last-modified" timestamp on the browser's cached copy. If the copy on the server is not newer than the browser's copy, the server returns a 304 code instead of returning the page, reducing unnecessary network traffic. This is not an error. 

 

401 

 

Unauthorized. The user requested a document but didn't provide a valid username or password. 

 

403 

 

Forbidden. Access to this URL is forbidden. 

 

404 

 

Not found. The document requested isn't on the server. This code can also be sent if the server has been told to protect the document by telling unauthorized people that it doesn't exist. 

 

500 

 

Server error. A server-related error occurred. The server administrator should check the server's error log to see what happened. 

 

 
 

Response header

The response header contains information about the server and information about the document that will follow. Common response headers are shown in Table A.3.
Common response headers 

 

Response header 

 

Description 

 

Server 

 

The name and version of the web server. 

 

Date 

 

The current date (in Greenwich Mean Time). 

 

Last-modified 

 

The date when the document was last modified. 

 

Expires 

 

The date when the document expires. 

 

Content-length 

 

The length of the data that follows (in bytes). 

 

Content-type 

 

The MIME type of the following data. 

 

WWW-authenticate 

 

Used during authentication and includes information that tells the client software what is necessary for authentication (such as username and password). 

 

 
 

Response data

The server sends a blank line after the last header field. The server then sends the document data.


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