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HTTP/1.1 protocol Cheat Sheet by

Request and Response Messages

The HTTP protocol consist into a request message, sent from a client to a web server; and a response message, sent from the server to the origin­ating client.

Request message general format:
HTTP Request Line

HTTP Request Headers

(empty line)

HTTP Request Body


Response message general format:
HTTP Response Line

HTTP Response Headers

(empty line)

HTTP Response Body

HTTP Request Line

Format: "
METHOD PATH PROTOCOL
"

METHOD: 
GET
, 
HEAD
, 
POST
, 
PUT
, 
DELETE
, 
TRACE
, 
OPTIONS
, 
CONNECT
, 
PATCH

PATH: the path of the resource
PROTOCOL: 
HTTP/1.1
Example: 
GET /image­s/l­ogo.png HTTP/1.1

HTTP Request Headers

"
NAME: VALUE
"*

NAME: 
[A-Za-­z0-­9][­A-Z­a-z­0-9-]+

VALUE: US-ASCII octets

Headers are extra inform­ation for the request. There are many standard headers and you can create your own.

See Common HTTP Request Headers
Example set of headers:
Host: en.wik­ipe­dia.org

User-A­gent: Mozill­a/5.0 Firefo­x/64.0

Accept: text/h­tml­,ap­pli­cat­ion­/xh­tml­+xm­l,a­ppl­ica­tio­n/x­ml;­q=0.9,/;q=0.8

Accept­-La­nguage: en-GB,­en-­US;­q=0.8,­en;­q=0.6,­fr-­FR;­q=0.4,­fr;­q=0.2

Accept­-En­coding: gzip, deflate, br

Connec­tion: keep-alive

Cookie: Auth=8­QXA­5fS­QeZ­AEK­ZVG­6iR­jMW­vQ8­KtQKAaj

HTTP Request Body

If the HTTP method used is 
POST
or 
PUT
, the request may be followed by a body. It can be a file or a specific form of data.

The 
Conten­t-Type
header must be filled with a MIME type to indicate the type of content.

The body is separated from the header by two line feeds (
\n
).

HTTP Response Line

Format: 
PROTOCOL STATUS REASON


PROTOCOL: 
HTTP/1.1

STATUS: Any HTTP Status Code
REASON: A reason message

The reason message is usually the label associated to the status code. Some APIs may use this text field to specify an error message.
Examples:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK

HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found

HTTP Response Headers

"
NAME: VALUE
"*

NAME: 
[A-Za-­z0-­9][­A-Z­a-z­0-9-]+

VALUE: US-ASCII octets

Headers are extra inform­ation for the response. There are many standard headers and you can create your own.

See Common HTTP Response Headers

HTTP Response Body

The is usually a response body after the response headers. It can be a file or a specific form of data.

The Conte­­nt-­­Type header must be filled with a MIME type to indicate the type of content.

The body is separated from the headers by two line feeds (\n).
 

HTTP Request Methods

GET
: used to retrieve a resource. Has no request body.
POST
: used to submit a new resource (path) or send data. Usually has a body.
HEAD
: used to preview the result of a 
GET
operation. Has no request body and no respond body.
PUT
: used to submit an update to an existing resource 
DELETE
: used to delete the specified resource
TRACE
: echoes the received request for tracing purposes
OPTIONS
: verify the server supports a specified request (see Preflight requests)
CONNECT
: used by HTTPS
PATCH
: allows partial modifi­cation of a resource

Common HTTP Request Headers

Accept
List of MIME types supported
Accept­-La­nguage
List of languages read by the user
Conten­t-L­ength
Length in bytes of the request body
Conten­t-Type
MIME type of the request body
Cookie
List of cookies stored by the client
Host
Host name of the website
User-Agent
Identi­fic­ation string for the web browser
There are many more available.
You can create your own headers.

HTTP Status Codes

1xx
Inform­ational
100
Continue
2xx
Successful
200
OK
201
Created
202
Accepted
204
No Content
3xx
Redire­ction
301
Moved perman­ently
302
Found
304
Not Modified
308
Permanent Redirect
4xx
Client Error
400
Bad Request
401
Unauth­orized
403
Forbidden
404
Not Found
405
Method Not Allowed
5xx
Server Error
500
Internal Server Error
502
Bad Gateway
503
Service Unavai­lable
504
Gateway Timeout
There are many other codes; these are the most used. You should not create your own codes.

Common HTTP Response Headers

Cache-­Control
: Indicates client caching conditions
Conten­t-L­ength
: Length of the response body in bytes
Conten­t-Type
: MIME type of the response body
Expires
: Client is allowed to keep the resouce in cache
Location
: Redire­ction URL
Server
: name of the server software
Set-Cookie
: new cookies that should be stored client­-side
There are many more available.
You can create your own headers.

Content size & streaming

When a message body is exchanged, the receiver must be able to determine when the message is complete (or how many bytes should be received to consider the body complete).

The main operating way is to use the 
Conten­t-L­ength
header with the size (in bytes) of the body that is to come.

When a streaming method is desired, an altern­ative way is to use the 
Transf­er-­Enc­oding: chunked
header and to follow the Chunked transfer encoding protocol.
 

Notes

All specif­ica­tions in this document have been simplified from the official HTTP standard. Always refer to the RFCs if necessary.

RFC-7230: Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/­1.1): Message Syntax and Routing

Protocol versions

HTTP/0.9 and HTTP/1.0
History: RFC-1945 (actual)

HTTP/1.1
This is the most used HTTP version.

History: RFC-2068 (obsol­ete), RFC-2616 (obsol­ete), RFC-7230 (actual)

HTTP/2
According to W3Techs, as of March 2019, 33.9% of the top 10 million websites supported HTTP/2.

History: RFC-7540 (actual)

HTTP/3
Also called HTTP-o­ver­-QUIC, it is the upcoming major version of HTTP.

About MIME types

The 
Accept
and 
Conten­t-Type
headers use MIME types to specify the type of message content.

There are basic MIME types for simple files and web formats: 
text/plain
, 
text/html
, 
applic­ati­on/xml
, 
applic­ati­on/json
, 
applic­ati­on/­oct­et-­stream
, 
text/css
, 
text/j­ava­script
...

There are MIME types for all known file formats: 
image/jpeg
, 
image/png
, 
audio/mpeg
, 
applic­ati­on/pdf
, 
applic­ati­on/zip
, 
font/woff
, 
video/mp4
...

There are specific MIME types related to browsers and APIs: 
multip­art­/mixed
, 
multip­art­/fo­rm-data
, 
multip­art­/by­ter­anges
, 
applic­ati­on/­x-w­ww-­for­m-u­rle­ncoded
...

Sometimes, extra inform­ation are added to a type. Text format can have a charset specif­ica­tion: 
text/p­lai­n;c­har­set­=UTF-8


See: RFC-2045, RFC-2046, RFC-2047, RFC-4288, RFC-4289, RFC-2049; and MDN: MIME type
Examples:
Conten­t-Type: text/p­lai­n;c­har­set­=utf-8

Proxy

HTTP Proxy servers are act as an interm­ediary for client­-to­-server requests such as HTTP.

A forward proxy is a type of proxy server that receives and forwards requests in order to cache and facilitate access to a wide range of web servers.

A reverse proxy is a type of proxy server that receives and forwards requests in order to do load-b­ala­ncing for a group of web servers.
   
 

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  • Published: 19th March, 2019
  • Rated: 5 out of 5 stars based on 1 ratings

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jqknono tr1p SandRock

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