Reading Notes: Overview of HTTP - Hsanokklis/2023-2024-Tech-journal GitHub Wiki

Chapter 1. Overview of HTTP

Web browsers, servers and related web applications all talk to each other through HTTP, the common language of the modern global internet

HTTP uses reliable data-transmission protocols that guarantees that your data will not be damaged or scrambled in transit.

Web Clients and Servers

Web content lives on web servers. Web servers speak the HTTP protocol so they are often called HTTP servers.

  • HTTP servers store the Internets data and provide the data when it is requested by HTTP clients.

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Resources

Web servers host web resources (a source of web content).

  • simplest web resource is a static file on the web server's filesystem
    • Html files, microsoft word files, adobe acrobat files, JPEG files etc

Resources don't have to be static files

  • they can be software programs that generate content on demand
    • live image from a camera, trade stocks, search real estate databases, buy gifts from online stores

Media Types

The internet hosts thousands of different data types.

  • HTTP tags each object being transported through the Web with a data format label called a MIME Type.
  • Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension MIME was originally created to solve problems encountered in moving messages between different electronic mail systems, but worked so well that HTTP adopted it.

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MIME type includes

  • Primary Object Type/specific subtype
    • In the image above image is the primary object and jpeg is the specific subtype.

URIs

Each web server resource has a name, so clients can point out what resources they are interested in. The server resource name is called a uniform resource identifier.

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