Basics of HTTP

HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. HTTP is a plain text-based and stateless application protocol that operates on top of the TCP layer and is used for retrieving and delivering graphics, audio, video, plain text, and multimedia content.

The Requests for Comments (RFC) publication for HTTP/1.1 (RFC 9112) defines HTTP as follows:

“The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a stateless application-level request/response protocol that uses extensible semantics and self-descriptive messages for flexible interaction with network-based hypertext information systems.”

HTTP works using the client-server model and uses a request-response method. The web client is typically a browser, and it interacts with a web server using HTTP.

HTTP works over TCP as layer 4. Once the TCP handshake is complete, the client initiates by sending an HTTP request. In the next section, let us talk about the HTTP request.

HTTP request

As mentioned, HTTP follows...