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HTTP Messages

Nov 20, 2024, 5 min read

🔗 HTTP

HTTP messages are how data is exchanged between a server and a client. There are two types of messages: requests sent by the client to trigger an action on the server, and responses, the answer from the server.

HTTP messages are composed of textual information encoded in ASCII, and span over multiple lines. In HTTP/1.1, and earlier versions of the protocol, these messages were openly sent across the connection. In HTTP/2, the once human-readable message is now divided up into HTTP frames, providing optimization and performance improvements.

HTTP requests, and responses, share similar structure and are composed of:

  1. A start-line describing the requests to be implemented, or its status of whether successful or a failure. This is always a single line.
  2. An optional set of HTTP headers specifying the request, or describing the body included in the message.
  3. A blank line indicating all meta-information for the request has been sent.
  4. An optional body containing data associated with the request (like content of an HTML form), or the document associated with a response. The presence of the body and its size is specified by the start-line and HTTP headers.

The start-line and HTTP headers of the HTTP message are collectively known as the head of the requests, whereas its payload is known as the body.

Tip

Request line and headers must be in ASCII encoding.

HTTP Requests

Request line

HTTP requests are messages sent by the client to initiate an action on the server. Their request-line contain three elements:

  1. An HTTP method, a verb (like GET, PUT or POST) or a noun (like HEAD or OPTIONS), that describes the action to be performed. For example, GET indicates that a resource should be fetched or POST means that data is pushed to the server (creating or modifying a resource, or generating a temporary document to send back).
  2. The request target, usually a URL, or the absolute path of the protocol, port, and domain are usually characterized by the request context. The format of this request target varies between different HTTP methods. It can be
    • An absolute path, ultimately followed by a '?' and query string. This is the most common form, known as the origin form, and is used with GET, POST, HEAD, and OPTIONS methods.
      • POST / HTTP/1.1
      • GET /background.png HTTP/1.0
      • HEAD /test.html?query=alibaba HTTP/1.1
      • OPTIONS /anypage.html HTTP/1.0
    • A complete URL, known as the absolute form, is mostly used with GET when connected to a proxy. GET https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Messages HTTP/1.1
    • The authority component of a URL, consisting of the domain name and optionally the port (prefixed by a ':'), is called the authority form. It is only used with CONNECT when setting up an HTTP tunnel. CONNECT developer.mozilla.org:80 HTTP/1.1
    • The asterisk form, a simple asterisk ('*') is used with OPTIONS, representing the server as a whole. OPTIONS * HTTP/1.1
  3. The HTTP version, which defines the structure of the remaining message, acting as an indicator of the expected version to use for the response.

Headers

HTTP Headers from a request follow the same basic structure of an HTTP header: a case-insensitive string followed by a colon (':') and a value whose structure depends upon the header. The whole header, including the value, consists of one single line, which can be quite long.

Many different headers can appear in requests. They can be divided in several groups:

Body

The final part of the request is its body. Not all requests have one: requests fetching resources like GET or HEAD usually don’t need a body. Requests that send data to the server to create a resource, such as PUT or POST requests, typically require a body with the data used to fulfill the request (for instance, HTML form data).

Bodies can be broadly divided into two categories:

HTTP Responses

Status line

The start line of an HTTP response, called the status line, contains the following information:

  1. The protocol version, usually HTTP/1.1, but can also be HTTP/1.0.
  2. A status code, indicating success or failure of the request. Common status codes are 200, 404, or 302.
  3. A status text. A brief, purely informational, textual description of the status code to help a human understand the HTTP message.

A typical status line looks like: HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found.

Headers

HTTP Headers for responses follow the same structure as any other header: a case-insensitive string followed by a colon (':') and a value whose structure depends upon the type of the header. The whole header, including its value, presents as a single line.

Many different headers can appear in responses. These can be divided into several groups:

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 201Created or 204 No Content) usually don’t.

Bodies can be broadly divided into three categories:

  • Single-resource bodies, consisting of a single file of known length, defined by the two headers: Content-Type and Content-Length.
  • Single-resource bodies, consisting of a single file of unknown length, encoded by chunks with Transfer-Encoding set to chunked.
  • Multiple-resource bodies, consisting of a multipart body, each containing a different section of information. These are relatively rare.

References

📂 HTTP | Последнее изменение: 18.04.2024 11:56

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