Using HTTP and REST to transmit objects
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is defined through a series of Request for Comments (RFC) documents. We won't review all of the particulars, but we will touch on three high points.
The HTTP protocol includes requests and replies. A request includes a method, a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), some headers, and optional attachments. A number of available methods are defined in the standards. Most browsers focus on making the GET and POST requests. The standard browsers include the GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE requests, which are the ones that we'll leverage because they correspond to the CRUD operations. We'll ignore most of the headers and focus on the path portion of the URI.
A reply includes a status code number and reason, headers, and some data. There are a variety of status code numbers. Of them, we're interested in just a few. The 200 status code is the generic OK response from a server. A 201 status code is the Created response, which might...
