The client submits an HTTP request message to the server. A web browser, for example, may be the client whereas a process, named web server, running on a computer hosting one or more websites may be the server. HTTP functions as a request–response protocol in the client–server model.

URL beginning with the HTTP scheme and the WWW domain name label Support for HTTP/3 was added to Cloudflare and Google Chrome first, and is also enabled in Firefox. Like HTTP/2, it does not obsolesce previous major versions of the protocol. HTTP/3 uses QUIC instead of TCP for the underlying transport protocol. HTTP/3 is the successor to HTTP/2, published in 2022 used by 25% of websites, it is now supported by many web browsers (73% of users). HTTP/2 is a more efficient expression of HTTP's semantics 'on the wire', and was published in 2015 used by more than 46% of websites, now supported by almost all web browsers (96% of users) and major web servers over Transport Layer Security (TLS) using an Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation (ALPN) extension where TLS 1.2 or newer is required. Its secure variant named HTTPS is used by more than 79% of websites. It evolved (as version 1.1) in 1997 and then its specifications were updated in 1999 and in 2014. HTTP/1 was finalized and fully documented (as version 1.0) in 1996.

ĭevelopment of early HTTP Requests for Comments (RFCs) started a few years later and it was a coordinated effort by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), with work later moving to the IETF. That first version of HTTP protocol soon evolved into a more elaborated version that was the first draft toward a far future version 1.0. That's in part because the TCP (of TCP/IP), is no longer used, as in the older standards. HTTP/3 has lower latency for real-world web pages, if enabled on the server, load faster than with HTTP/2, and even faster than HTTP/1.1, in some cases over 3× faster than HTTP/1.1 (which is still commonly only enabled). HTTP/3 is the latest version of the protocol, published in 2022 already used by 25% of websites ahead of standardization. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, where hypertext documents include hyperlinks to other resources that the user can easily access, for example by a mouse click or by tapping the screen in a web browser.ĭevelopment of HTTP was initiated by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989 and summarized in a simple document describing the behavior of a client and a server using the first HTTP protocol version that was named 0.9. The Hypertext Transfer Protocol ( HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. RFC 8441 HTTP/2: Bootstrapping WebSockets with HTTP/2 (2018).RFC 8164 HTTP/2: Opportunistic Security for HTTP/2 (2017).RFC 7541 HTTP/2: HPACK Header Compression (2015).RFC 7230 HTTP/1.1: Message Syntax and Routing (2014).

Java http client example