HTTP: The Definitive Guide

Preface; Running Example: Joe's Hardware Store; Chapter-by-Chapter Guide; Typographic Conventions; Comments and Questions; Acknowledgments; Part I: HTTP: The Web's Foundation; Chapter 1: Overview of HTTP; 1.1 HTTP: The Internet's Multimedia Courier; 1.2 Web Clients and Servers; 1.3 Resources; 1.4 Transactions; 1.5 Messages; 1.6 Connections; 1.7 Protocol Versions; 1.8 Architectural Components of the Web; 1.9 The End of the Beginning; 1.10 For More Information; Chapter 2: URLs and Resources; 2.1 Navigating the Internet's Resources; 2.2 URL Syntax; 2.3 URL Shortcuts; 2.4 Shady Characters; 2.5 A Sea of Schemes; 2.6 The Future; 2.7 For More Information; Chapter 3: HTTP Messages; 3.1 The Flow of Messages; 3.2 The Parts of a Message; 3.3 Methods; 3.4 Status Codes; 3.5 Headers; 3.6 For More Information; Chapter 4: Connection Management; 4.1 TCP Connections; 4.2 TCP Performance Considerations; 4.3 HTTP Connection Handling; 4.4 Parallel Connections; 4.5 Persistent Connections; 4.6 Pipelined Connections; 4.7 The Mysteries of Connection Close; 4.8 For More Information; Part II: HTTP Architecture; Chapter 5: Web Servers; 5.1 Web Servers Come in All Shapes and Sizes; 5.2 A Minimal Perl Web Server; 5.3 What Real Web Servers Do; 5.4 Step 1: Accepting Client Connections; 5.5 Step 2: Receiving Request Messages; 5.6 Step 3: Processing Requests; 5.7 Step 4: Mapping and Accessing Resources; 5.8 Step 5: Building Responses; 5.9 Step 6: Sending Responses; 5.10 Step 7: Logging; 5.11 For More Information; Chapter 6: Proxies; 6.1 Web Intermediaries; 6.2 Why Use Proxies?; 6.3 Where Do Proxies Go?; 6.4 Client Proxy Settings; 6.5 Tricky Things About Proxy Requests; 6.6 Tracing Messages; 6.7 Proxy Authentication; 6.8 Proxy Interoperation; 6.9 For More Information; Chapter 7: Caching; 7.1 Redundant Data Transfers; 7.2 Bandwidth Bottlenecks; 7.3 Flash Crowds; 7.4 Distance Delays; 7.5 Hits and Misses; 7.6 Cache Topologies; 7.7 Cache Processing Steps; 7.8 Keeping Copies Fresh; 7.9 Controlling Cachability; 7.10 Setting Cache Controls; 7.11 Detailed Algorithms; 7.12 Caches and Advertising; 7.13 For More Information; Chapter 8: Integration Points: Gateways, Tunnels, and Relays; 8.1 Gateways; 8.2 Protocol Gateways; 8.3 Resource Gateways; 8.4 Application Interfaces and Web Services; 8.5 Tunnels; 8.6 Relays; 8.7 For More Information; Chapter 9: Web Robots; 9.1 Crawlers and Crawling; 9.2 Robotic HTTP; 9.3 Misbehaving Robots; 9.4 Excluding Robots; 9.5 Robot Etiquette; 9.6 Search Engines; 9.7 For More Information; Chapter 10: HTTP-NG; 10.1 HTTP's Growing Pains; 10.2 HTTP-NG Activity; 10.3 Modularize and Enhance; 10.4 Distributed Objects; 10.5 Layer 1: Messaging; 10.6 Layer 2: Remote Invocation; 10.7 Layer 3: Web Application; 10.8 WebMUX; 10.9 Binary Wire Protocol; 10.10 Current Status; 10.11 For More Information; Part III: Identification, Authorization, and Security; Chapter 11: Client Identification and Cookies; 11.1 The Personal Touch; 11.2 HTTP Headers; 11.3 Client IP Address; 11.4 User Login; 11.5 Fat URLs; 11.6 Cookies; 11.7 For More Information; Chapter 12: Basic Authentication; 12.1 Authentication; 12.2 Basic Authentication; 12.3 The Security Flaws of Basic Authentication; 12.4 For More Information; Chapter 13: Digest Authentication; 13.1 The Improvements of Digest Authentication; 13.2 Digest Calculations; 13.3 Quality of Protection Enhancements; 13.4 Practical Considerations; 13.5 Security Considerations; 13.6 For More Information; Chapter 14: Secure HTTP; 14.1 Making HTTP Safe; 14.2 Digital Cryptography; 14.3 Symmetric-Key Cryptography; 14.4 Public-Key Cryptography; 14.5 Digital Signatures; 14.6 Digital Certificates; 14.7 HTTPS: The Details; 14.8 A Real HTTPS Client; 14.9 Tunneling Secure Traffic Through Proxies; 14.10 For More Information; Part IV: Entities, Encodings, and Internationalization; Chapter 15: Entities and Encodings; 15.1 Messages Are Crates, Entities Are Cargo; 15.2 Content-Length: The Entity's Size; 15.3 Entity Digests; 15.4 Media Type and Charset; 15.5 Content Encoding; 15.6 Transfer Encoding and Chunked Encoding; 15.7 Time-Varying Instances; 15.8 Validators and Freshness; 15.9 Range Requests; 15.10 Delta Encoding; 15.11 For More Information; Chapter 16: Internationalization; 16.1 HTTP Support for International Content; 16.2 Character Sets and HTTP; 16.3 Multilingual Character Encoding Primer; 16.4 Language Tags and HTTP; 16.5 Internationalized URIs; 16.6 Other Considerations; 16.7 For More Information; Chapter 17: Content Negotiation and Transcoding; 17.1 Content-Negotiation Techniques; 17.2 Client-Driven Negotiation; 17.3 Server-Driven Negotiation; 17.4 Transparent Negotiation; 17.5 Transcoding; 17.6 Next Steps; 17.7 For More Information; Part V: Content Publishing and Distribution; Chapter 18: Web Hosting; 18.1 Hosting Services; 18.2 Virtual Hosting; 18.3 Making Web Sites Reliable; 18.4 Making Web Sites Fast; 18.5 For More Information; Chapter 19: Publishing Systems; 19.1 FrontPage Server Extensions for Publishing Support; 19.2 WebDAV and Collaborative Authoring; 19.3 For More Information; Chapter 20: Redirection and Load Balancing; 20.1 Why Redirect?; 20.2 Where to Redirect; 20.3 Overview of Redirection Protocols; 20.4 General Redirection Methods; 20.5 Proxy Redirection Methods; 20.6 Cache Redirection Methods; 20.7 Internet Cache Protocol; 20.8 Cache Array Routing Protocol; 20.9 Hyper Text Caching Protocol; 20.10 For More Information; Chapter 21: Logging and Usage Tracking; 21.1 What to Log?; 21.2 Log Formats; 21.3 Hit Metering; 21.4 A Word on Privacy; 21.5 For More Information; Part VI: Appendixes; Appendix A: URI Schemes; Appendix B: HTTP Status Codes; B.1 Status Code Classifications; B.2 Status Codes; Appendix C: HTTP Header Reference; Appendix D: MIME Types; D.1 Background; D.2 MIME Type Structure; D.3 MIME Type IANA Registration; D.4 MIME Type Tables; Appendix E: Base-64 Encoding; E.1 Base-64 Encoding Makes Binary Data Safe; E.2 Eight Bits to Six Bits; E.3 Base-64 Padding; E.4 Perl Implementation; E.5 For More Information; Appendix F: Digest Authentication; F.1 Digest WWW-Authenticate Directives; F.2 Digest Authorization Directives; F.3 Digest Authentication-Info Directives; F.4 Reference Code; Appendix G: Language Tags; G.1 First Subtag Rules; G.2 Second Subtag Rules; G.3 IANA-Registered Language Tags; G.4 ISO 639 Language Codes; G.5 ISO 3166 Country Codes; G.6 Language Administrative Organizations; Appendix H: MIME Charset Registry; H.1 MIME Charset Registry; H.2 Preferred MIME Names; H.3 Registered Charsets; Colophon;