The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is used to load web pages. It is an application layer protocol run on top of other network protocol stack. A typical flow over HTTP involves a client machine making a request to the server, which sends a response message.
Nowadays, it is more common to run HTTP over TLS (HTTPS) to improve security.
Subsections
HTTP Request
A typical HTTP request includes:
- HTTP Protocol version number
- URL
- HTTP method
- request headers
- optional body
HTTP Response
A typical HTTP response includes:
- an HTTP status code
- response headers
- optional body