HTTP message body

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HTTP Message Body is the data bytes transmitted in an HTTP transaction message immediately following the headers if there are any (in the case of HTTP/0.9 no headers are transmitted).

HTTP message[edit]

The request/response message consists of the following:

  • Request line, such as GET /logo.gif HTTP/1.1 or Status line, such as HTTP/1.1 200 OK,
  • Headers
  • An empty line
  • Optional HTTP message body data

The request/status line and headers must all end with <CR><LF> (that is, a carriage return followed by a line feed). The empty line must consist of only <CR><LF> and no other whitespace.

The "optional HTTP message body data" is what this article defines.

Response example[edit]

This could be a response from the web server:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2010 23:26:07 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) mod_ssl/2.2.8 OpenSSL/0.9.8g Last-Modified: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 22:04:35 GMT ETag: "45b6-834-49130cc1182c0" Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 12 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html  Hello world! 

The message body (or content) in this example is the text Hello world!.

See also[edit]