A feature of HTTP is the typing and negotiation of data representation, allowing systems to be built independently of the data being transferred. HTTP has been in use by the World Wide Web global information initiative since 1990.
What is HTTP?
2003-09-23: in order to fetch a web page for you, your web browser must "talk" to a web server somewhere else. When web browsers talk to web servers, they speak a language known as HTTP, which stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. This language is actually very simple and understandable and is not difficult for the human eye to follow.
A Simple HTTP Example
The browser says:
GET / HTTP/1.0
Host: www.boutell.com
And the server replies:
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html
The rest of Boutell.Com's home page appears here
The first line of the browser's request, GET / HTTP/1.0, indicates that the browser wants to see the home page of the site, and that the browser is using version 1.0 of the HTTP protocol. The second line, Host: www.boutell.com, indicates the web site that the browser is asking for. This is required because many web sites may share the same IP address on the Internet and be hosted by a single computer. The Host: line was added a few years after the original release of HTTP 1.0 in order to accommodate this. The first line of the server's reply, HTTP/1.0 200 OK, indicates that the server is also speaking version 1.0 of the HTTP protocol, and that the request was successful. If the page the browser asked for did not exist, the response would read HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found. The second line of the server's reply, Content-Type: text/html, tells the browser that the object it is about to receive is a web page. This is how the browser knows what to do with the response from the server. If this line were Content-Type: image/png, the browser would know to expect a PNG image file rather than a web page, and would display it accordingly.
A modern web browser would say a bit more using the HTTP 1.1 protocol, and a modern web server would respond with a bit more information, but the differences are not dramatic and the above transaction is still perfectly valid; if a browser made a request exactly like the one above today, it would still be accepted by any web server, and the response above would still be accepted by any browser. This simplicity is typical of most of the protocols that grew up around the Internet.
Human Beings Can Speak HTTP
In fact, you can try being a web browser yourself, if you are a patient typist. If you are using Windows, click the Start menu, select "Run," and type "telnet www.mywebsitename.com 80" in the dialog that appears. Then click OK. Users of other operating systems can do the same thing; just start your own telnet program and connect to your web site as the host and 80 as the port number. When the connection is made, type:
GET / HTTP/1.0
Host: www.mywebsitename.com
Make sure you press ENTER twice after the Host: line to end your HTTP headers. Your telnet program probably will not show you what you are typing, but after you press ENTER the second time, you should receive your web site's home page in HTML after a short pause. Congratulations, you have carried out your very own simple HTTP transaction.
HTTP 1.1 Differences
Originally, web browsers made a separate HTTP request like this for each and every page, and for each and every image or other component of the page. While this is still often the case, most web servers and browsers now support HTTP 1.1 and can negotiate to keep the connection open and transfer all of the page components without hanging up and opening new connections. For the complete HTTP 1.1 specification, see the W3C Consortium's HTTP-related pages.
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