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Lesson 2

The HTTP conversation

See how requests and responses form the web’s simple, powerful conversation.

1 min readUpdated Jul 11, 2026

HTTP is the language browsers and web servers use to exchange messages. Its core pattern is deliberately simple: a client sends a request, and a server returns a response.

A request has intent

GET /courses/web HTTP/1.1
Host: learn.staticvar.dev
Accept: text/html

The method GET says what the client intends to do. The path identifies the resource. Headers add context such as the desired response format.

A response reports an outcome

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 4280

<!doctype html>...

The status code summarizes what happened. 200 means success, 404 means the resource was not found, and 500 means the server encountered an error.

Diagram
flowchart LR
    A[Browser] -->|Request| B[Web server]
    B --> C{Can it fulfill it?}
    C -->|Yes| D[2xx response]
    C -->|Redirect| E[3xx response]
    C -->|Client issue| F[4xx response]
    C -->|Server issue| G[5xx response]

The important boundary

HTTP does not say how a server must produce its response. The bytes might come from a static file, a database-backed application, a cache, or another service. From the browser’s perspective, the contract is the same.

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