Lesson 01 · Backend & Servers
How the Web Works: Clients, Servers & HTTP
The mechanics behind every page you have ever loaded: clients and servers, what really happens when you type a URL, and the requests, responses, methods, status codes and headers that make up HTTP.
Prerequisites: JavaScript arrays, objects & JSON
Learning objectives
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
- Trace a page load from the address bar to a rendered page through DNS, TCP and one HTTP exchange
- Read a raw HTTP request and response, naming method, path, headers and body
- Classify status codes by their first digit and choose the common ones deliberately
- Explain what statelessness means for servers and how cookies bolt memory onto it