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Software Engineering vocabulary · APIs, Networking and Security

HTTP

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˌeɪtʃ tiː tiː ˈpiː/abbreviationCore term

In software engineering, HTTP means: Hypertext Transfer Protocol: the set of rules that browsers and servers use to send requests and responses across the web.

In Turkish: HTTP, hiper metin aktarım protokolü

How it is used

Developers speak of HTTP requests, methods, headers and status codes. Versions are named HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3; the secure version, used by almost every site today, is HTTPS.

Example sentences

  1. The app sends an HTTP request to the server every time you press Save.

  2. Our CDN already serves everything over HTTP/2.

Common collocations

  • HTTP request
  • HTTP response
  • HTTP header
  • HTTP status code
  • over HTTP
  • HTTPSThe secure version of HTTP, which encrypts the connection between the browser and the server with TLS so that others cannot read or change the data.
  • 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.
  • HTTP methodThe word at the start of an HTTP request that says what the client wants to do, such as GET to read, POST to create or DELETE to remove.
  • status codeA three-digit number in an HTTP response that tells the client what happened, such as 200 for success, 404 for not found or 500 for a server error.

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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