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Software Engineering vocabulary · APIs, Networking and Security

Header

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˈhedər/nounCommon term

In software engineering, header means: A name and value pair sent with an HTTP request or response that carries extra information, such as Content-Type, Authorization or Cache-Control.

In Turkish: başlık, header

How it is used

Developers set, read and check headers, often in the Network tab. Security, caching and CORS all depend on headers. In HTML, header is also the name of the element at the top of a page or section.

Example sentences

  1. Send the token in the Authorization header, not in the URL.

  2. The response headers show that the file is cached for a year.

Common collocations

  • request header
  • response header
  • set a header
  • Authorization header
  • security headers
  • HTTPHypertext Transfer Protocol: the set of rules that browsers and servers use to send requests and responses across the web.
  • requestA message that a client sends to a server or API, asking it to do something such as return data or save a new record.
  • responseThe message a server or API sends back after receiving a request, usually containing a status code, headers and data such as JSON.
  • CORSCross-Origin Resource Sharing: browser rules that let a server say which other websites (origins) may read its responses through JavaScript.
  • cacheA place where copies of files or data are kept for a while so they can be served again faster, for example in the browser, on a CDN or on the server.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: APIs, Networking and Security

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