Web Server Programming

Chapter 2
HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) chapter of the text is background information. All communications between browser and web-server rely on HTTP so it is necessary to know a little about the features of this communications protocol.

The definitive site for information on HTTP is naturally the W3.org site. The site has the 1999 specification of HTTP 1.1 specification. This site also has some source code for a Java web server and a library of C functions for working with HTTP.

Netscape added "cookies" to the protocol in order to assist mechanisms for maintaining session state; the original proposals are still available on-line.

On related matters, the W3 site is also the reference for HTML ; XML and related technologies, SMIL, SOAP, etc.