What is Hyper Test Transfer Protocol (HTTP)?
The Hyper Test Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the basic protocol of the
Web, it was first proposed by Tim Berners-Lee. HTTP defines the way in
which different types of clients including browsers can interact with
web server.
HTTP is request-response base protocol where client sends an HTTP
request to server and server process the request, generate HTTP response
and sends the response back to client.
HTTP is the stateless protocol in which client open the connection to
the server and sends an HTTP request to server, server returns HTTP
response to client and client close the connection. In simple words
server never know about the previous request of the client, this problem
and its solutions are defined in detail under the
Session Management.
There are eight methods for HTTP request including HEAD, GET, POST, PUT,
DELETE, TRACE, OPTIONS and CONNECT but the most commonly used methods
are GET and POST.
In the case of Internet where browser is the client and web server is
the HTTP server and
HTML files, text files, images, videos are the
resources. Each Resource of HTTP is identified by unique URL (Unified
Identified Locator). Browsers examine the URL in order to access the
corresponding resource. HTTP URL is responsible to carry out two main
functions firstly it has to identify the web server in which resource is
maintained and secondly which of the resource in the server is required.
HTTP client can request per HTTP request which means if any HTML file
contains number of other resources like images, videos then browser will
have to send separate HTTP request for each resource.