HTTP, WHAT IS IT?

Teddy Otieno Asola
Aug 31, 2018 · 1 min read

First things first, let’s expound on the acronym. HTTP strictly stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Isolating the words and defining them, can help us deduce the meaning.

Hypertext — in simple terms, is text which contains link to other hypermedia(photo, video, document etc.). I’d argue that hyperlink would be an appropriate word.

Transfer — pretty self-explanatory, i.e move from one place to another. From that definition, you’d infer that there’s a source and a target, in our context, the server and client.

Protocol — an agreed set of rules that governs the communication between end points in a telecommunication connection. Again, in our context, the endpoints would be the server and client.

Essentially, we have a set of agreed rules that dictates how we move hypermedia(photo, video, document) from one computer to another.