The set of common methods for HTTP/1.1 is defined below and this set can be expanded based on requirement. These method names are case sensitive and they must be used in uppercase.
| S.N. | Method and Description |
|---|---|
| 1 | GET The GET method is used to retrieve information from the given server using a given URI. Requests using GET should only retrieve data and should have no other effect on the data. |
| 2 | HEAD Same as GET, but only transfer the status line and header section. |
| 3 | POST A POST request is used to send data to the server, for example customer information, file upload etc using HTML forms. |
| 4 | PUT Replace all current representations of the target resource with the uploaded content. |
| 5 | DELETE Remove all current representations of the target resource given by URI. |
| 6 | CONNECT Establish a tunnel to the server identified by a given URI. |
| 7 | OPTIONS Describe the communication options for the target resource. |
| 8 | TRACE Perform a message loop-back test along the path to the target resource. |
GET Method
A GET request retrieves data from a web server by specifying parameters in the URL portion of the request. This is the main method used for document retrieval. Following is a simple example which makes use of GET method to fetch hello.htm:
GET /hello.htm HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE5.01; Windows NT) Host: www.tutorialspoint.com Accept-Language: en-us Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate Connection: Keep-Alive
Following will be a server response against the above GET request:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:28:53 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) Last-Modified: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:15:56 GMT ETag: "34aa387-d-1568eb00" Vary: Authorization,Accept Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 88 Content-Type: text/html Connection: Closed <html> <body> <h1>Hello, World!</h1> </body> </html>
HEAD Method
The HEAD method is functionally like GET, except that the server replies with a response line and headers, but no entity-body. Following is a simple example which makes use of HEAD method to fetch header information about hello.htm:
HEAD /hello.htm HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE5.01; Windows NT) Host: www.tutorialspoint.com Accept-Language: en-us Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate Connection: Keep-Alive
Following will be a server response against the above GET request:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:28:53 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) Last-Modified: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:15:56 GMT ETag: "34aa387-d-1568eb00" Vary: Authorization,Accept Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 88 Content-Type: text/html Connection: Closed
You can notice that here server does not send any data after header.
POST Method
The POST method is used when you want to send some data to the server, for example file update, form data etc. Following is a simple example which makes use of POST method to send a form data to the server which will be processed by a process.cgi and finally a response will be returned:
POST /cgi-bin/process.cgi HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE5.01; Windows NT) Host: www.tutorialspoint.com Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8 Content-Length: 88 Accept-Language: en-us Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate Connection: Keep-Alive <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <string xmlns="http://clearforest.com/">string</string>
Server side script process.cgi process the passed data and send following response:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:28:53 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) Last-Modified: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:15:56 GMT ETag: "34aa387-d-1568eb00" Vary: Authorization,Accept Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 88 Content-Type: text/html Connection: Closed <html> <body> <h1>Request Processed Successfully</h1> </body> </html>
PUT Method
The PUT method is used to request the server to store the included entity-body at a location specified by the given URL. The following example request server to save the given entity-boy in hello.htm at the root of the server:
PUT /hello.htm HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE5.01; Windows NT) Host: www.tutorialspoint.com Accept-Language: en-us Connection: Keep-Alive Content-type: text/html Content-Length: 182 <html> <body> <h1>Hello, World!</h1> </body> </html>
The server will store given entity-body in hello.htm file and will send following response back to the client:
HTTP/1.1 201 Created Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:28:53 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) Content-type: text/html Content-length: 30 Connection: Closed <html> <body> <h1>The file was created.</h1> </body> </html>
DELETE Method
The DELETE method is used to request the server to delete file at a location specified by the given URL. The following example request server to delete the given file hello.htm at the root of the server:
DELETE /hello.htm HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE5.01; Windows NT) Host: www.tutorialspoint.com Accept-Language: en-us Connection: Keep-Alive
The server will delete mentioned file hello.htm and will send following response back to the client:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:28:53 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) Content-type: text/html Content-length: 30 Connection: Closed <html> <body> <h1>URL deleted.</h1> </body> </html>
CONNECT Method
The CONNECT method is used by the client to establish a network connection to a web server over HTTP. The following example request a connection with a web server running on host tutorialspoint.com:
CONNECT www.tutorialspoint.com HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE5.01; Windows NT)
The connection is established with the server and following response is sent back to the client:
HTTP/1.1 200 Connection established Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:28:53 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Win32)
OPTIONS Method
The OPTIONS method is used by the client to find out what are the HTTP methods and other options supported by a web server. The client can specify a URL for the OPTIONS method, or an asterisk (*) to refer to the entire server. The following example request a list of methods supported by a web server running on tutorialspoint.com:
OPTIONS * HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE5.01; Windows NT)
The server will send information based on the current configuration of the server, for example:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:28:53 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) Allow: GET,HEAD,POST,OPTIONS,TRACE Content-Type: httpd/unix-directory
TRACE Method
The TRACE method is used to eacho the contents of an HTTP Request back to the requester which can be used for debugging purpose at the time of development. The following example shows the usage of TRACE method:
TRACE / HTTP/1.1 Host: www.tutorialspoint.com User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE5.01; Windows NT)
The server will send following message in response of the above request:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:28:53 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) Connection: close Content-Type: message/http Content-Length: 39 TRACE / HTTP/1.1 Host: www.tutorialspoint.com User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE5.01; Windows NT
Reference: http://www.tutorialspoint.com/http/http_methods.htm
Http Status Codes
Informational 1xxSuccessful 2xxRedirection 3xxClient Error 4xxServer Error 5xx100 Continue101 Switching Protocols102 Processing (WebDAV) (RFC 2518)103 Checkpoint122 Request-URI too long (Microsoft/IE7)--------------------------------------------200 OK201 Created (+ etag)202 Accepted203 Non-Authoritative Information204 No Content (no body)205 Reset Content (reset view)206 Partial Content (+ range header)207 Multi-Status (WebDAV) (RFC 4918)226 IM Used (RFC 3229)--------------------------------------------300 Multiple Choices301 Moved Permanently302 Found303 See Other (since HTTP/1.1)304 Not Modified305 Use Proxy (since HTTP/1.1)306 Switch Proxy (no longer used)307 Temporary Redirect (since HTTP/1.1)308 Resume Incomplete--------------------------------------------400 Bad Request401 Unauthorized402 Payment Required (future)403 Forbidden404 Not Found405 Method Not Allowed406 Not Acceptable407 Proxy Authentication Required408 Request Timeout409 Conflict (with the resource)410 Gone411 Length Required412 Precondition Failed413 Request Entity Too Large414 Request-URI Too Long415 Unsupported Media Type416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable417 Expectation Failed418 I'm a teapot (RFC 2324)420 Enhance Your Calm (Twitter API)422 Unprocessable Entity (WebDAV) (RFC 4918)423 Locked (WebDAV) (RFC 4918)424 Failed Dependency (WebDAV) (RFC 4918)425 Unordered Collection (RFC 3648)426 Upgrade Required (RFC 2817)428 Precondition Required (RFC 2616 pending)429 Too Many Requests (RFC 2616 pending)431 Request Header Fields Too Large444 No Response (Nginx)449 Retry With (Microsoft)450 Blocked by Windows Parental Controls (Microsoft)499 Client Closed Request (Nginx)--------------------------------------------500 Internal Server Error501 Not Implemented502 Bad Gateway503 Service Unavailable504 Gateway Timeout505 HTTP Version Not Supported506 Variant Also Negotiates (RFC 2295)507 Insufficient Storage (WebDAV)(RFC 4918)509 Bandwidth Limit Exceeded (Apache)510 Not Extended (RFC 2774)511 Network Authentication Required (RFC 2616 pending)598 Network read timeout error (Informal convention)599 Network connect timeout error (Informal convention)
