URL and HTTP Reminder

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This is just a quick reminder on the make up of a URL and basic details of a HTTP request/response cycle.

URL

The following Uniform Resource Locator (URL), http://www.example.com/new, can be split into 3 parts

1. http - The URL scheme

2. www.example.com - the resource path or host

3. /new - URL path

Additionally URL's contain a port number which the host uses to listen to HTTP requests eg. http://www.example.com:80/new. The port is not always specified and port 80 will be used by default in normal HTTP requests.

HTTP

Request

• Verb/Method: GET, POST

• URL

• parameters

Response

• Status code
  • 200 OK
  • 302 Redirect
  • 404 File not found
  • 500 Application error
• payload/body
  • HTML, XML, JSON, etc

Remember that the request/response is stateless, ie requests are not connected.

For example

GET /page_with_form_on_it - render a view: 200 and an HTML payload (completes the response). - form is displayed for the user to enter data.

POST /page_with_form_on_it - save the data somewhere, say a database. - display the next thing. Redirect to another URL: 302 and next URL (completes the response). May also render again if there are errors on the form.

GET /the_next_thing

That's it just a quick blog post as a reminder of some of the basics.

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