Rapid Prototyping with Rails: Lesson 3, HTTP

HTTP has two parts:

1. Request:

• Verb/Method: GET, POST
• URL
• Parameters

2. Response:

1. Status Code
   • 200 Ok
   • 302 Redirect (issues another request)
   • 404 File Not Found
   • 500 Application Error
2. Payload/Message/Body - which will depend on the request

Modern browsers will block against redirect loops and/or limit redirects.

A request is not connected to another request - meaning its stateless.

An example:
GET/new_game
  - display the form to enter your name
  - render a view: 200 and HTML (complete the response)

POST/new_game
  - save the name somewhere (persistence layer)
  - display the next thing
  - redirect to another URL: 302 and the next URL completes the response.

Persistency Layer
1. Database (most common)
2. Session cookies (persistency within your browser)