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15.4 HTTP

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Hypertext Transport Protocol is a very basic protocol as we saw earlier - implementing a web server in 30 lines of code shows how easy it can be. However, there is actually a remarkable degree of complexity behind it allows for a lot of flexibility, much of which lies in the plethora of status codes it has available.

These status codes are all three digits, and can be broken down into the following groups:

1xx: Informational - Request received, continuing process
2xx: Success - The action was successfully received, understood, and accepted
3xx: Redirection - Further action must be taken in order to complete the request
4xx: Client Error - The request contains bad syntax or cannot be fulfilled
5xx: Server Error - The server failed to fulfil an apparently valid request

As you can see, 400-level errors are client errors - the client did not send the right kind of request, requested a file that does not exist, etc. The most common error, 404, is a client error meaning, "Object not found" - the user typed in a URL that did not exist. Also in the 400 series is 401, "Unauthorized", where the user did not provide the correct credentials to view the content.

In order to be able to manipulate HTTP skilfully, you need a list of the most important HTTP status codes - and there they are:

200	Request accepted; response attached
201	Request accepted; new object created on server
206	Request accepted; partial content attached
301	Content moved permanently
400	Bad request; client sent something bad
401	Unauthorised; client sent credentials, but they were rejected
403	Forbidden; server understood the request, but refuses to comply
404	Not found; URL requesting non-existent object was sent
500	Internal server error; the server encountered something internally (not from the client) that prevented it from fulfilling the request. This usually means the server or a module such as PHP is configured incorrectly and/or crashing.

<< 15.3 Host and IP resolution: gethostbyaddr(), gethostbyname(), and gethostbynamel()		15.4.1 Sending custom headers: header() and headers_sent() >>
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