HTTP and HTTP Requests

HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. World Wide Web (WWW) is all about communication between web clients and servers. Communication between client computers and web servers is done by sending HTTP Requests and receiving HTTP Responses.

The data travels between the request and response in other formats like JSON – JavaScript Object Notation which is one of the most commonly used and accepted format for data transmissions and we will also be following the same as discussed in subsequent chapters.

Communication between clients and servers is done by requests and responses:

•  A client (a browser) sends an HTTP request to the web
•  An web server receives the request
•  The server runs an application to process the request
•  The server returns an HTTP response (output) to the browser
•  The client (the browser) receives the response.

A typical HTTP request / response circle:

•  The browser requests an HTML page. The server returns an HTML file.
•  The browser requests a style sheet. The server returns a CSS file.
•  The browser requests an JPG image. The server returns a JPG file.
•  The browser requests JavaScript code. The server returns a JS file
•  The browser requests data. The server returns data (in XML or JSON).