HTTPS Request / Response Life-cycle

User enters url -> Browser sends request -> Server parses url && header -> Server sends response object.

  1. User enters a URL[1] https://host:port/path/querystring
  2. Browser sends Request Object[2]

  3. Server parses the url and header to handle the request

    • Finds the HTTP methods[3]
    • maps the request to a function that handles the request
    • executes the function and forms the response
    • if needed the function will interact with the database
    • formats the response
    • sets the status of the response (eg. 200 (ok), 404 (not found))

  4. Server sends the Response Object[4] back to the users browser

    • browser stores and displays response

[1] URL:

  • protocol - Usually HTTP:// or HTTPS:// - Other common protocols are FTP, SSH, and POP3.
  • domain -www.getsomestuff.com
  • port - :80 - points to a specific application on a machine
  • path - the/file/you/want
  • query - ?key1=value1&key2=value2&key3=value3 - this is not part of the routing of the request - it is the data passed into the function that is executed once the location is resolved

[2] Request Object:

  • The object that represents the HTTP request.
  • By convention it's named req
  • It has information about the location and the data that is being requested by a user
  • It includes information about the User-Agent (browser), user preferred language, the host, encoding, connections and more.
  • The data includes the type of request, methods for resolving the type of data returned, any parameters, body, headers and more.
  • see MDN for more info

[3] HTTP methods:

  • GET/POST/PUT/HEAD/DELETE/PATCH/OPTIONS

[4] Response Object:

  • The response that is sent to a client from a server after the request is completed.
  • By convention it's named res
  • Includes data, type, url, status, statusText, body, headers and more.
  • It contains methods for dealing with the data including error, and promises for resolving the data in specific formats (eg. arrayBuffer, blob, json).