HTTP: The Definitive Guide

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HTTP: The Definitive Guide

By David Gourley, Brian Totty
With Marjorie�Sayer,�Sailu�Reddy,�Anshu�Aggarwal
First Edition September 2002
Pages: 656
ISBN 10: 1-56592-509-2 | ISBN 13: 9781565925090
(Average of 4 Customer Reviews)

Book description

Web technology has become the foundation for all sorts of critical networked applications and far-reaching methods of data exchange, and beneath it all is a fundamental protocol: HyperText Transfer Protocol, or HTTP. HTTP: The Definitive Guide documents everything that technical people need for using HTTP efficiently. A reader can understand how web applications work, how the core Internet protocols and architectural building blocks interact, and how to correctly implement Internet clients and servers.
Full Description

Behind every web transaction lies the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) --- the language of web browsers and servers, of portals and search engines, of e-commerce and web services. Understanding HTTP is essential for practically all web-based programming, design, analysis, and administration. While the basics of HTTP are elegantly simple, the protocol's advanced features are notoriously confusing, because they knit together complex technologies and terminology from many disciplines. This book clearly explains HTTP and these interrelated core technologies, in twenty-one logically organized chapters, backed up by hundreds of detailed illustrations and examples, and convenient reference appendices. HTTP: The Definitive Guide explains everything people need to use HTTP efficiently -- including the "black arts" and "tricks of the trade" -- in a concise and readable manner. In addition to explaining the basic HTTP features, syntax and guidelines, this book clarifies related, but often misunderstood topics, such as: TCP connection management, web proxy and cache architectures, web robots and robots.txt files, Basic and Digest authentication, secure HTTP transactions, entity body processing, internationalized content, and traffic redirection. Many technical professionals will benefit from this book. Internet architects and developers who need to design and develop software, IT professionals who need to understand Internet architectural components and interactions, multimedia designers who need to publish and host multimedia, performance engineers who need to optimize web performance, technical marketing professionals who need a clear picture of core web architectures and protocols, as well as untold numbers of students and hobbyists will all benefit from the knowledge packed in this volume. There are many books that explain how to use the Web, but this is the one that explains how the Web works. Written by experts with years of design and implementation experience, this book is the definitive technical bible that describes the "why" and the "how" of HTTP and web core technologies. HTTP: The Definitive Guide is an essential reference that no technically-inclined member of the Internet community should be without.

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Featured customer reviews

HTTP: The Definitive Guide Review, October 30 2006

Rating:

Submitted by Anonymous Reader [Respond | View]

If Sid likes it, 'nuf said. I'm buying it!

HTTP: The Definitive Guide Review, August 26 2003

Rating:

Submitted by Alex Belt of the Columbia Java Users Group [Respond | View]

As its name states, this book is a definitive guide. It provides in depth coverage of all important HTTP information in use today, ranging from the basic communications protocol, to cache control, proxies, and security mechanisms. It’s extremely well written in clear and easy to understand terms.

The organization of the book is one reason I gave it only 4 tarsiers instead of 5. Material on proxies, and especially cache control, was spread through the book, rather than being located in any one area. While the basics of these are important to understanding some of the considerations in writing an HTTP application, a different organizational structure may have suited the material better.

This book is a great teaching and reference book for learning HTTP, but if you are not planning on running your own HTTP server, especially a proxy or caching server, a lot of this book is overkill. I’m sure I’ll be referring to it in the future for various other kinds of HTTP information.

HTTP: The Definitive Guide Review, March 12 2003

Rating:

Submitted by Sid Sidner [Respond | View]

I've fooled around with HTTP for years, but never really quite became an expert. I've read much of the RFC, an excellent spec, but serious as cancer - it helps if you know 95% of what you're reading and are just going for the 95%.

Well, this book is where you get that first 95% and is just fantastic. I really don't need to be an HTTP expert anymore, but I can't put it down. It's like The Secrets Of The Universe revealed. HTTP means many things to many people and next to TCP/IP is probably one of the most implemented protocols on the Internet. I now understand about historical versions of browsers, servers, and protocols. I now understand proxies, and smart routers, and authentication systems and reverse proxies.

This book is super-readable, with clear, NON-TRIVIAL examples, and tips. The authors even put up a Web site and show you how to telnet to it, to watch what its Apache Web server responds with.

I wish I could write this well!

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HTTP: The Definitive Guide Review, January 29 2003

Rating:

Submitted by George Woolley [Respond | View]

An excellent book.

If you want to learn more about HTTP, its core technologies,

and the context in which it exits, this book will likely serve you well.

I used it for that.

The book also helped me to learn more about bots.

The book provides both perspective and useful specifics.

See details.

Media reviews "Designing a new web application by referring to the RFC can be very time-consuming due to the sheer quantity of condensed information. Thankfully this book takes apart the specs and expands them into a more easily digested form...The book is well-written. Linux Format Rating: 8 out of 10."
--Maurice R Kelly, "Linux Format," April 2003

"If you want to learn more about HTTP, its core technologies, and the context in which it exists, this book will likely serve you well."
--George Woolley, Oakland Perl Mongers Group, Jan 2003

"An excellent text...I don't know of any other title that describes HTTP and related core technologies in such technical depth and is at the same time so readable...the writing is yet another example of technical communication at its best."
--Major Kearny, Book News, Jan 2003

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