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Summary

HTTP is the most widely used protocol for passing data on the internet. It is a stateless protocol, meaning that each request is independent from any other request, even for the same resource. It allows a few specific methods:

- `GET` - request data from the server
- `POST` - upload data to the  server
- `PUT` - update data on the server
- `DELETE` - remove data from the server

Each request is like a function call across the web and can receive parameters. In a URL, they are separated from the path by ? and from each other by &. They are key-value pairs such as ?user=hacker&role=god.

The two commands we've added to our arsenal today are curl and wget:

  • curl: create and send HTTP requests.

Here are some of its most useful parameters:

- `-v`: **verbose** - display the request and response headers.
- `-d`: **data** - specify the body of a request (usually a `POST` request) and the query parameters
    - `-G`: **get** - allows sending a body in a `GET` request
- `-X <method>`: use another HTTP method than the default `GET`
- `-L`: **follow redirects** - issue another request to the redirected URL the when receiving a `3XX` response.
  • wget: download files