A Story of HTTP


One day Mickey was at his farm when he saw Minnie

Mickey – Hi Minnie

Minnie – Oh, Hi Mickey

Mickey – How are you

Minnie – I am good

Mickey – What are you thinking

Minnie – I need to learn what is HTTP, Have been checking online but it’s not working

Mickey – It’s easy, let me tell you

Minnie – Great, let’s go to the coffee shop


Mickey & Minnie went to the coffee shop

Mickey – Okay Minnie, now tell me how do you order a coffee

Minnie – Mickey, it’s not time for all this. Just tell me about HTTP

Mickey – I am coming to that, just tell me

Minnie – Just goto the counter, Tell what coffee, size, the flavor you want, and get your coffee

Mickey – Right, now tell me how you and the person at the coffee shop are able to communicate with each other

Minnie – Well, we speak the same language, we understand each other

Mickey – Exactly, Now in the same way on the web applications need to talk to each other and need some common language (protocol) and this protocol is HTTP

HTTP – HyperText Transfer Protocol

Minnie – So it’s like the language of the internet

Mickey – You Got it

Minnie – Tell me more

Mickey – Well, on the internet there is a client and the server. The client sends a message or request and the server responds with a response

Minnie – So when I visit any webpage from my browser, it talks to the server using HTTP

Mickey – Exactly, your browser is the client and the computer or server from where the request is processed is the server

Clients are often browsers (Chrome, Edge, Safari), but they can be any type of program or device
Servers are most often computers in the cloud

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

  1. A client (a browser) sends an HTTP request to the web
  2. A web server receives the request
  3. The server runs an application to process the request
  4. The server returns an HTTP response (output) to the browser
  5. The client (the browser) receives the response

Minnie – So the client is always a browser

Mickey – No, most often we do this via browser, but it can be any application or program

Minnie – Great, tell me more

Mickey – Now this response also contains a number called HTTP Status Code

Minnie – I have heard about this

Mickey – Yes, the status codes tells a lot about the request, response, and the content

For e.g. the 2xx codes are all for success and confirms everything is alright with the request and based on the resource you are enquiring about you can get the following

200 – OK

201 – Created

202 – Accepted

204 – No Content

All 3xx are redirection codes

301 – Moved Permanently

302 – Found

4xx are client errors when you have something wrong with your request

400 – Bad Request

401 – Unauthorised

403 – Forbidden

404 – Not Found

5xx are server errors

500 – Internal Server Error

503 – Service Unavailable

Can see all here – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes

Minnie – Okay now I got this, This is why sometimes I see these status codes on my browser

Mickey – Yes, Now another important thing in this communication is the method

We can have several methods in HTTP

GET

POST

PUT

DELETE
….

Minnie – What are they

Mickey – Let’s go back to the coffee shop example.


Here you communicate in English and you can say complete sentences when you order your coffee. Now in HTTP communication, we need specific format and verbs to tell the server what exactly you need

for example
Just to get information or read a resource we use GET along with the URL of the application or resource

GET /index.html

POST – to create a new resource or send data to the server

PUT – to update the information

DELETE – to delete information or resource

And there are several other methods. Can see here – https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Methods

Minnie – So, this is what I get:

  • HTTP is the protocol or language of the internet
  • This helps communication between applications on the world wide web
  • It follows client-server architecture, where the client sends a request and the server sends a response
  • The communication happens using HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc)
  • The response contains status codes to give information about the request, response, and content

Mickey – Wow, you got it Minnie, better than I thought

Minnie – All thanks to you

Mickey – So do you want to order more coffee

Minnie – Not let’s go back to your farm and watch the sunset

Mickey – Okay, let’s go

Mickey and Minnie reached the farm

Minnie – You are my best friend

Mickey – I am always here for you 🙂

about the author  |  more stories

References
https://learn.onemonth.com/understanding-http-basics/
https://www.w3schools.com/whatis/whatis_http.asp

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