HTTP Overview - The J2EE 1.4 Tutorial
HTTP Overview
Most Web clients use the HTTP protocol to communicate with a J2EE server. HTTP defines the requests that a client can send to a server and responses that the server can send in reply. Each request contains a URL, which is a string that identifies a Web component or a static object such as an HTML page or image file.
A J2EE server converts an HTTP request to an HTTP request object and delivers it to the Web component identified by the request URL. The Web component fills in an HTTP response object, which the server converts to an HTTP response and sends to the client.
This appendix provides introductory material on the HTTP protocol. For further information on this protocol, see the Internet RFCs: HTTP/1.0 (RFC 1945), HTTP/1.1 (RFC 2616). These can be downloaded from
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