HTTP: The Definitive Guide

Resources

Web servers host web resources . A web resource is the source of web content. The simplest kind of web resource is a static file on the web server’s filesystem. These files can contain anything: they might be text files, HTML files, Microsoft Word files, Adobe Acrobat files, JPEG image files, AVI movie files, or any other format you can think of.

However, resources don’t have to be static files. Resources can also be software programs that generate content on demand. These dynamic content resources can generate content based on your identity, on what information you’ve requested, or on the time of day. They can show you a live image from a camera, or let you trade stocks, search real estate databases, or buy gifts from online stores (see Figure 1-2).

Figure 1-2. A web resource is anything that provides web content

In summary, a resource is any kind of content source. A file containing your company’s sales forecast spreadsheet is a resource. A web gateway to scan your local public library’s shelves is a resource. An Internet search engine is a resource.

Media Types

Because the Internet hosts many thousands of different data types, HTTP carefully tags each object being transported through the Web with a data format label called a MIME type. MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) was originally designed to solve problems encountered in moving messages between different ...