February 5, 2025
1 min read

HTTP Headers: A Complete Guide

headers

HTTP headers are an essential component of communication between clients and servers on the World Wide Web. They provide additional information about the request or response, allowing browsers and servers to understand and process the data appropriately.

In this article, we’ll explore some of the most common HTTP headers and their uses.

Request headers

  • Content-Type: Specifies the media type (MIME type) of the resource or data that is sent in the request body. For example, application/json.
  • Authorization: Used to pass authentication credentials (e.g., tokens, API keys) in the request. It is commonly used for secure endpoints.
  • Accept: Indicates the types of media that the client is willing to receive from the server. For example, application/json.
  • User-Agent: Identifies the client software making the request. It is used for analysis, browser detection, or security purposes.
  • Cache-Control: Directs caching behavior on both the client and server. You can specify no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, and so on.
  • Host: Specifies the domain name of the server and the TCP port number where the server is running. It is required for HTTP/1.1 requests.
  • Origin: Specifies the origin (schema, hostname, and port) of the request. Used in cross-origin resource sharing (CORS).
  • Referrer: Indicates the URL of the web page that made the request. This helps with analysis and determination of traffic sources.
  • Accept-Encoding: Tells the server which content encoding methods (e.g., gzip, deflate) the client supports for data compression.
  • Cookie: Used to send cookies stored from the client to the server, usually to maintain sessions or store preferences.

Response Headers

  • Set-Cookie: Sent by the server to the client to store cookies. These cookies are stored on the client side and are sent with future requests.

Other important headings

  • X-Requested-With: Primarily used with AJAX requests to identify that the request is made via JavaScript (e.g., XMLHttpRequest).
  • Connection: Controls whether the network connection remains open after the current transaction ends. Values include keep-alive or close.
  • X-Forwarded-For: Used by proxies to identify the original IP address of the client making the request, useful for logging and security purposes.

Conclusion

HTTP headers play a critical role in web communication. Understanding the different headers and their uses can help developers build more robust and secure web applications.

Avelino Dominguez

Biologist - Teacher - Statistician #SEO #SocialNetwork #Web #Data ♟Chess - Galician

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