Gotta Wear Shades: The Bright Future of HTTP (CoderFaire Nashville 2013)

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) version 1.1 was published in June of 1999. Almost fifteen years have passed. In that time, the Web has seen many changes, but it would seem that, throughout this time, HTTP has remained fixed, stagnant. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth.

HTTP is evolving, like languages, through common usage and need. In this talk, Ben Ramsey discusses the past fifteen years of HTTP and how it has changed through the introduction of new methods and headers. He covers the current state of the protocol and the new HTTPbis Working Group that is drafting new RFCs to clarify HTTP. Finally, the talk will take a look at proposals for HTTP version 2 and what this means for web developers.

Transcript

1. Ben Ramsey
   Gotta Wear Shades
   The Bright Future of HTTP
   

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2. Hypertext
   Transfer
   Protocol
   

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3. 1991: HTTP/0.9
   

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4. 1992-95: HTTP/1.0 draft
   

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5. 1996: HTTP/1.0
   RFC 1945
   

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6. 1997: HTTP/1.1
   RFC 2068
   

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7. 1999: HTTP/1.1
   RFC 2616
   

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11. HTTP
    Refresher
    Course
    

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12. Methods
    GET
    HEAD
    POST
    PUT
    DELETE
    OPTIONS
    TRACE
    CONNECT
    

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13. Status Codes
    1xx: Informational
    2xx: Successful
    3xx: Redirection
    4xx: Client error
    5xx: Server error
    

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14. Selected Headers
    Accept
    Authorization
    Cache-Control
    Content-Type
    Date
    ETag
    If-Match
    If-Modified-Since
    Last-Modified
    Location
    Range
    Referer
    User-Agent
    WWW-Authenticate
    

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15. Extensions
    to HTTP/1.1
    

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16. WebDAV
    Web Distributed Authoring
    and Versioning
    RFC 4918
    

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17. WebDAV gives us the
    concept of collection
    resources.
    

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18. Collection:
    http://example.org/books/
    Item:
    http://example.org/books/1984
    

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19. PATCH
    Allows a set of changes to be
    described, rather than the full
    entity body.
    RFC 5789
    

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20. OPTIONS /books/1984 HTTP/1.1
    Host: example.org
    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Allow:
    GET, HEAD, PUT, PATCH, OPTIONS, DELETE
    Accept-Patch:
    application/json-patch+json, text/diff
    

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21. PATCH /books/1984 HTTP/1.1
    Host: example.org
    Content-Length: 188
    Content-Type: application/json-patch+json
    [
    {
    "op": "replace",
    "path": "/isbn",
    "value": "978-0452262935"
    },
    {
    "op": "add",
    "path": "/asin",
    "value": "0452262933"
    }
    ]
    

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22. More Status Codes
    Defines new codes for a
    variety of common uses, to
    improve interoperability, and
    to avoid confusion.
    RFC 6585
    

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23. 428 Precondition Required
    

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24. 429 Too Many Requests
    

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25. 431 Request Header Fields
    Too Large
    

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26. Web Linking
    Defines a framework for
    typed links not specific to an
    application, and introduced
    the Link header.
    RFC 5988
    

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27. GET /books/?page=2 HTTP/1.1
    Host: example.org
    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Content-Type: text/html
    Link: ;
    rel="previous"; title="Page 1",
    ;
    rel="next"; title="Page 3"
    

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28. Prefer Header
    Defines a header used by the
    client to request certain
    server behaviors when
    processing a request.
    draft-snell-http-prefer-18
    

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29. POST /collection HTTP/1.1
    Host: example.org
    Content-Type: text/plain
    Prefer: respond-async
    {Data}
    HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
    Location: http://example.org/collection/
    123
    Preference-Applied: respond-async
    

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30. POST /collection HTTP/1.1
    Host: example.org
    Content-Type: text/plain
    Prefer: return=minimal
    {Data}
    HTTP/1.1 201 Created
    Location: http://example.org/collection/
    123
    Preference-Applied: return=minimal
    

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31. Other
    Cookie, RFC 6265
    Content-Disposition, RFC 6266
    Web Origin, RFC 6454
    Deprecating “X-”
    , RFC 6648
    

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32. HTTPbis
    Working
    Group
    

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33. bis
    bis is a Latin adverb meaning
    “twice”
    

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34. Charter
    Charged with maintaining and
    developing the "core"
    specifications for HTTP
    .
    They have three deliverables.
    

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35. A document (or set of documents)
    that is suitable to supersede RFC
    2616 as the definition of HTTP/1.1
    and move RFC 2817 to Historic
    status
    

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36. A document cataloguing the
    security properties of HTTP/1.1
    

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37. A document (or set of documents)
    that specifies HTTP/2.0, an
    improved binding of HTTP's
    semantics to an underlying
    transport.
    

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38. Superseding 1.1
    Message Syntax and Routing
    Semantics and Content
    Conditional Requests
    Range Requests
    Caching
    Authentication
    

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39. Additional
    Method Registrations
    Auth Scheme Registrations
    

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40. HTTP/2.0
    A new message encapsulation to
    enable efficient use of network
    resources and reduced latency
    through header field compression
    and multiple concurrent messages
    on the same connection.
    

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41. It also introduces unsolicited push
    of representations from servers to
    clients!
    

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42. It does not obsolete HTTP/1.1.
    

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43. It is based on the SPDY Protocol.
    

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44. Key Concepts
    Frames
    Streams
    Server Push
    

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45. Frames
    HTTP messages are encoded
    into frames. These frames are
    a more efficient serialization
    of the message.
    

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46. Streams
    A single connection may
    contain multiple concurrently
    active streams. They may be
    shared by the client or server.
    

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47. Server Push
    A server may send multiple
    resources to the client in
    response to a single request.
    

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48. So, where are we?
    

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49. What can I do now?
    

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50. HTTP/1.1
    

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51. SPDY
    

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52. HTTP/2.0
    

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53. Thank you
    Ben Ramsey
    benramsey.com
    @ramsey
    

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54. Resources
    HTTP/0.9 (1991):
    http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/AsImplemented.html
    HTTP/1.0 (draft 1992):
    http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/HTTP2.html
    HTTP/1.0 (draft 1994):
    http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-fielding-http-spec-00
    HTTP 1.0 (May 1996):
    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1945
    HTTP/1.1 (Jan 1997):
    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2068 (obsoleted by RFC 2616)
    HTTP/1.1 (Jun 1999):
    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616
    

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55. Resources
    WebDAV:
    http://www.webdav.org/
    Well-known URIs:
    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5785
    Additional HTTP Status Codes:
    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6585
    Web Linking:
    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988
    Deprecating the "X-" Prefix header:
    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6648
    Use of Content-Disposition:
    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6266
    

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56. Resources
    HTTP Header Fields Registrations:
    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4229
    Prefer Header:
    http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-snell-http-prefer-18
    Well-known URI Registry:
    http://www.iana.org/assignments/well-known-uris/
    Method Header Fields Registry:
    http://www.iana.org/assignments/message-headers/
    HTTP Status Codes Registry:
    https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-status-codes/
    JSON Patch:
    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6902
    

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57. Resources
    HTTPbis:
    http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/
    HTTP Method Registrations:
    http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpbis-method-registrations/
    HTTP Auth Scheme Registrations:
    http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpbis-authscheme-
    registrations/
    

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58. Resources
    HTTP/1.1 Message Syntax and Routing:
    http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpbis-p1-messaging/
    HTTP/1.1 Semantics and Content:
    http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpbis-p2-semantics/
    HTTP/1.1 Conditional Requests:
    http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpbis-p4-conditional/
    HTTP/1.1 Range Requests:
    http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpbis-p5-range/
    HTTP/1.1 Caching:
    http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpbis-p6-cache/
    HTTP/1.1 Authentication:
    http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpbis-p7-auth/
    

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59. Resources
    HTTP/2.0:
    http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpbis-http2/
    HTTP/2.0 Header Compression:
    http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpbis-header-compression/
    Web Socket Protocol:
    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6455
    SPDY Protocol:
    http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-mbelshe-httpbis-spdy-00
    Apache mod_spdy:
    https://code.google.com/p/mod-spdy/
    Nginx SPDY Module:
    http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_spdy_module.html
    

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60. Gotta Wear Shades: The Bright Future of HTTP
    Copyright © Ben Ramsey. Some rights reserved.
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
    Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.
    For uses not covered under this license, please contact the
    author.
    Ramsey, Ben. “Gotta Wear Shades: The Bright Future of
    HTTP.” CoderFaire. Nashville School of Law, Nashville, TN.
    17 August 2013. Conference Presentation.
    

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