HTTP and sessions

In this section we will take a brief look at the HTTP protocol and how it has evolved over time. Also discuss how servers keep track of user state using HTTP sessions. This knowledge will come in handy when we try to understand how REST protocol works.

A brief history of HTTP

In order to better understand the advantages of the REST protocol, let us take a small detour into how the internet was used before the REST web protocol came onto the scene. The internet in 1990s was mostly used to store and share documents as marked up documents using HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). For this chapter, HTTP can be summarized as follows:

• HTTP is a network communication protocol that starts with an HTTP request and...