Product Description

The HyperText Transfer Protocol, or HTTP, is the backbone of the World Wide Web. HTTP is the language that each Web browser (or other Web client) uses to communicate with servers around the world. All Web programmers, administrators, and application developers need to be familiar with HTTP in order to work effectively. This text not only offers a solid conceptual foundation of HTTP, it also serves as a quick reference to each of the headers and status codes that comprise an HTTP transaction. The book starts with a tutorial of HTTP, but then explains the client request and server responses in more detail, and gives a thorough technical explanation of more advanced features of HTTP (such as persistent connections and caching).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #296335 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 80 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Don't confuse HTTP with HTML. HyperText Transfer Protocol refers to the underlying mechanism. This is a reference for Web server administrators and site developers--not page coders.

The book describes the way HTTP works. You'll find extensive listings for headers--which covers cache control directives and such like--server response codes, client methods, referring documents, media types, cookies and similar arcana. It's a book for those who need to talk to Web servers, not just get pages from them. It describes the mechanics of get and post, how to understand server responses and troubleshoot problems.

Perhaps the most useful aspect of the HTTP Pocket Reference are the HTTP transaction dumps which show the kind of information returned, its format and the limits on what you can and can't discover. The amount of HTTP information available is an eye opener. There's nothing in the HTTP Pocket Reference you can't find in the RFCs and other--thicker--books, but here it's presented for those on the front line who just want it to work--right now. --Steve Patient

Doug Larson, San Diego Mac Users Group, August 2001
For those that want to understand what goes on underneath the hood, this book is an excellent reference.

Apache Week
For such a thin book, it manages to cram technical facts, dumps of HTTP transactions, many diagrams and tables .

Customer Reviews

Almost perfect
This is a very good explanation of HTTP 1.0 and 1.1, which should be enough for almost all purposes. I strongly recommend it. Two minor points: no mention of HTTP 0.9 as far as I can tell; and contrary to what it says in the introduction, there doesn't seem to be an explanation of how to interact with an HTTP server by hand, probably because the author thought this was obvious. (If you need to do this, use telnet on port 80, type in the requests as the book specifies followed by two carriage returns).

Good text, poor reference
The descriptions are excellent and well laid out with diagrams to show HTTP transaction sequences. Why only 3 stars, because as a reference it suffers in the same way as other O'Reilly pocket references in that it lacks an index. For 75 pages there's a measly contents page with 14 entries.

For online reference I prefer "HTTP Essentials" from Wiley as it comes with the book's text on CD - great for searching.

Excellent!
Just the right level of detail for those who are familiar with web technology, but require more details. Everything is clearly laid out and easy to find, this is the only reference you will ever need for HTTP!