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# HTTP Message Example

To retrieve the file at the URL

>     http://www.somehost.com/path/file.html

first open a socket to the host www.somehost.com, port 80 (use the default port of 80 because none is specified in the URL). Then, send something like the following through the socket:

    GET /path/file.html HTTP/1.0
    From: someuser@tutorialspoint.com
    User-Agent: HTTPTool/1.0
    [blank line here]

The server should respond with something like the following, sent back through the same socket:

    HTTP/1.0 200 OK
    Date: Fri, 31 Dec 1999 23:59:59 GMT
    Content-Type: text/html
    Content-Length: 1354

    <html>
    <body>
    <h1>Happy New Millennium!</h1>

    (more file contents)
      .
      .
      .
    </body>
    </html>

After sending the response, the server closes the socket.

To familiarize yourself with requests and responses, do manually experiment with HTTP using telnet.

# Manually Experimenting with HTTP

Using telnet, you can open an interactive socket to an HTTP server. This lets you manually enter a request, and see the response written to your screen. It's a great help when learning HTTP, to see exactly how a server responds to a particular request. It also helps when troubleshooting.

From a Unix prompt, open a connection to an HTTP server with something like

>     telnet www.somehost.com 80

Then enter your request line by line, like

>     GET /path/file.html HTTP/1.0
>     [headers here, if any]
>     [blank line here]

After you finish your request with the blank line, you'll see the raw response from the server, including the status line, headers, and message body.

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