HTTP message body explained

HTTP Message Body is the data bytes transmitted in an HTTP transaction message immediately following the headers if there are any (in the case of HTTP/0.9 no headers are transmitted).

HTTP message

The request/response message consists of the following:

• Request line, such as GET /logo.gif HTTP/1.1 or Status line, such as HTTP/1.1 200 OK,
• Headers
• An empty line
• Optional HTTP message body data

The request/status line and headers must all end with (that is, a carriage return followed by a line feed). The empty line must consist of only and no other whitespace.

The "optional HTTP message body data" is what this article defines.

Response example

This could be a response from the web server:

HTTP/1.1 200 OKDate: Sun, 10 Oct 2010 23:26:07 GMTServer: Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) mod_ssl/2.2.8 OpenSSL/0.9.8gLast-Modified: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 22:04:35 GMTETag: "45b6-834-49130cc1182c0"Accept-Ranges: bytesContent-Length: 12Connection: closeContent-Type: text/html

Hello world!

The message body (or content) in this example is the text Hello world!.

See also

• HTTP
• HTTP compression
• List of HTTP headers
  • List of HTTP status codes Web cache