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INTERNET TECHNOLOGY AND WEB DESIGN

Chapter: 8.13 HTTP

Topic: 8.13.1 HTTP

HTTP
• The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-level protocol for
distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems.

• This is the foundation for data communication for the World Wide Web (ie.
internet) since 1990.

• HTTP is a generic and stateless protocol which can be used for other purposes
as well using extension of its request methods, error codes and headers.

• Basically, HTTP is a TCP/IP based communication protocol, which is used to

deliver data (HTML files, image files, query results etc.) on the World Wide Web.

• The default port is TCP 80, but other ports can be used.

• It provides a standardized way for computers to communicate with each other.

• HTTP specification specifies how clients request data will be constructed and
sent to the serve, and how servers respond to these requests.

Basic Features of HTTP

• There are following three basic features which makes HTTP a simple but
powerful protocol.
 HTTP is connection-less
 The HTTP client i.e. browser initiates an HTTP request and after a request
is made, the client disconnects from the server and waits for a response.
 The server process the request and re-establish the connection with the
client to send response back.
 HTTP is media independent
 This means, any type of data can be sent by HTTP as long as both the
client and server know how to handle the data content.
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 This is required for client as well as server to specify the content type
using appropriate MIME-type.
 HTTP is stateless
 As mentioned above, HTTP is a connection-less and this is a direct result
that HTTP is a stateless protocol.
 The server and client are aware of each other only during a current
request. Afterwards, both of them forget about each other.
 Due to this nature of the protocol, neither the client nor the browser can
retain information between different requests across the web pages.
HTTP Architecture

• The HTTP protocol is a request/response protocol based on client/server based

architecture where web browser, robots and search engines, etc. act like HTTP
clients and Web server acts as server.
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FIG 8.15 : HTTP Protocol

• Client
 The HTTP client sends a request to the server in the form of a request
method, URI, and protocol version, followed by a MIME-like message
containing request modifiers, client information, and possible body content
over a TCP/IP connection.

• Server
 The HTTP server responds with a status line, including the message's
protocol version and a success or error code, followed by a MIME-like
message containing server information, entity Meta information, and possible
entity-body content.

HTTP Version

• HTTP uses a <major>.<minor> numbering scheme to indicate versions of the

protocol. The version of an HTTP message is indicated by an HTTP-Version field
in the first line.
• Here is the general syntax of specifying HTTP version number.
HTTP-Version = “HTTP” “/” 1*DIGIT “.” 1*DIGIT

• Example

HTTP/1.0
or
HTTP/1.1

Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI)

• Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) is simply formatted, case-insensitive string

containing name, location etc to identify a resource, for example a website, a
web service etc.
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• A general syntax of URI used for HTTP is as follows.

URI = “http:” “//” host [“:” port] [ abs_path [ “?” query ]]

• Here if the port is empty or not given, port 80 is assumed for HTTP and an
empty abs_path is equivalent to an abs_path of "/".
• The characters other than those in the reserved and unsafe sets are equivalent
to their ""%" HEX HEX" encoding.
• EXAMPLE

Date/Time Formats

• All HTTP date/time stamps must be represented in Greenwich Mean Time

(GMT), without exception.

• HTTP applications are allowed to use any of the following three representations
of date/time stamps:

Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT ; RFC 822, updated by RFC 1123
Sunday, 06-Nov-94 08:49:37 GMT ; RFC 850, obsoleted by RFC 1036
Sun Nov 6 08:49:37 1994 ; ANSI C's asctime() format

Character Sets

• User use character set to specify the character sets that the client prefers.

• Multiple character sets can be listed separated by commas. If a value is not

specified, the default is US-ASCII.

• Example, following are valid character sets

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US-ASCII
or
ISO-8859-1
or
ISO-8859-7

Content Encodings

• A content encoding values indicate an encoding algorithm has been used to

encode the content before passing it over the network.

• Content coding’s are primarily used to allow a document to be compressed or

otherwise usefully transformed without losing the identity.

• All content-coding values are case-insensitive. HTTP/1.1 uses content-coding

values in the Accept-Encoding and Content-Encoding header fields which we will
see in subsequent chapters.

Example, following are valid encoding schemes.

Accept-encoding: gzip
or
Accept-encoding: compress
or
Accept-encoding: deflate

Media Types

• HTTP uses Internet Media Types in the Content-Type and Accept header fields
in order to provide open and extensible data typing and type negotiation.
• All the Media-type values are registered with the Internet Assigned Number
Authority ((IANA).
• Following is a general syntax to specify media type.
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Media-type = type “/” subtype *(“;” parameter)

• The type, subtype, and parameter attribute names are case- insensitive.

• Example

Accept: image/gif

Language Tags

• HTTP uses language tags within the Accept-Language and Content-Language

fields.
• A language tag is composed of 1 or more parts. A primary language tag and a
possibly empty series of subtags.

Language-tag = primary-tag *(“-” subtag)

• White space is not allowed within the tag and all tags are case- insensitive.

• Example tags include,

En, en-US, en-cockney, i-cherokee, x-pig-latin

HTTP request header

• The information, in the form of a text record, that a user's browser sends to a
Web Server containing the details of what the browser wants and will accept
back from the server.

• The requestheader also contains the type, version and capabilities of the
browser that is making the request so that server returns compatible data.

• Upon receipt of the request header, the server will return an HTTP responce
header to the client that is attached to the file(s) being sent.
HTTP response header
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• The information, in the form of a text record that a Web Server sends back to a
client's browser in response to receiving an HTTP request.
• The response header contains the date, size and type of file that the server is
sending back to the client and also data about the server itself. The header is
attached to the files being sent back to the client.
• Contrast with an HTTP request header.