HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

HTTP, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol facilitates every transaction over the World Wide Web and is used to define how requests and responses between servers and browsers are transmitted and formatted.

Common HTTP methods

GET
POST
PUT
DELETE
CONNECT
HEAD
OPTIONS
TRACE

HTTP works based on a request/response pair, every interaction starts with a request using one of the HTTP methods and ends with a response containing an HTTP status code.

HTTP by nature is a stateless protocol with each request/response pair being unique and independent of other requests/responses.

If state is important in a web application, HTTP sessions are used to store state between the browser and the server by transmitting information in cookies about where the user is in a sequence of events.

HTTP headers can include additional information such as:

What type of client sent the request
Server information
Time and date of the response
Duration of data storage
Data format
Cookies used to track sessions

GET the specified resource, if available.

Create a new resource and add it to a collection.

Update an existing singleton resource based on ID.

Modify an existing singleton resource based on ID.

Delete a singleton resource based on ID.

The difference between the HTTP versions

HTTP/1.1	HTTP/2 > HTTPS
Uncompressed headers	Uses compression algorithms to speed up requests
Transfers one file at a time	Encryption over HTTPS
No default encryption	Supports multi-plexing / multiple files

HTTP Flow

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