This book contains 21 chapters, divided into 5 logical parts (each with a technology theme), and 8 useful appendixes containing reference data and surveys of related technologies:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Part I, describes the core technology of HTTP, the foundation of the Web, in four chapters:

·         Chapter 1 is a rapid-paced overview of HTTP.

·         Chapter 2 details the formats of uniform resource locators (URLs) and the various types of resources that URLs name across the Internet. It also outlines the evolution to uniform resource names (URNs).

·         Chapter 3 details how HTTP messages transport web content.

·         Chapter 4 explains the commonly misunderstood and poorly documented rules and behavior for managing HTTP connections.

Part II highlights the HTTP server, proxy, cache, gateway, and robot applications that are the architectural building blocks of web systems. (Web browsers are another building block, of course, but browsers already were covered thoroughly in Part I of the book.) Part II contains the following six chapters:

·         Chapter 5 gives an overview of web server architectures.

·         Chapter 6 explores HTTP proxy servers, which are intermediary servers that act as platforms for HTTP services and controls.

·         Chapter 7 delves into the science of web caches-devices that improve performance and reduce traffic by making local copies of popular documents.

·         Chapter 8 explains gateways and application servers that allow HTTP to work with software that speaks different protocols, including Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encrypted protocols.

·         Chapter 9 describes the various types of clients that pervade the Web, including the ubiquitous browsers, robots and spiders, and search engines.

·         Chapter 10 talks about HTTP developments still in the works: the HTTP-NG protocol.

Part III presents a suite of techniques and technologies to track identity, enforce security, and control access to content. It contains the following four chapters:

·         Chapter 11 talks about techniques to identify users so that content can be personalized to the user audience.

·         Chapter 12 highlights the basic mechanisms to verify user identity. The chapter also examines how HTTP authentication interfaces with databases.

·         Chapter 13 explains digest authentication, a complex proposed enhancement to HTTP that provides significantly enhanced security.

·         Chapter 14 is a detailed overview of Internet cryptography, digital certificates, and SSL.

Part IV focuses on the bodies of HTTP messages (which contain the actual web content) and on the web standards that describe and manipulate content stored in the message bodies. Part IV contains three chapters:

·         Chapter 15 describes the structure of HTTP content.

·         Chapter 16 surveys the web standards that allow users around the globe to exchange content in different languages and character sets.

·         Chapter 17 explains mechanisms for negotiating acceptable content.

Part V discusses the technology for publishing and disseminating web content. It contains four chapters:

·         Chapter 18 discusses the ways people deploy servers in modern web hosting environments and HTTP support for virtual web hosting.

·         Chapter 19 discusses the technologies for creating web content and installing it onto web servers.

·         Chapter 20 surveys the tools and techniques for distributing incoming web traffic among a collection of servers.

·         Chapter 21 covers log formats and common questions.

Part VI contains helpful reference appendixes and tutorials in related technologies:

·         Appendix A summarizes the protocols supported through uniform resource identifier (URI) schemes.

·         Appendix B conveniently lists the HTTP response codes.

·         Appendix C provides a reference list of HTTP header fields.

·         Appendix D provides an extensive list of MIME types and explains how MIME types are registered.

·         Appendix E explains base-64 encoding, used by HTTP authentication.

·         Appendix F gives details on how to implement various authentication schemes in HTTP.

·         Appendix G defines language tag values for HTTP language headers.

·         Appendix H provides a detailed list of character encodings, used for HTTP internationalization support.

Each chapter contains many examples and pointers to additional reference material.

 

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)