Understanding the Web Development
Explore the fundamentals of web development by understanding HTTP communication, URL components, and how browsers interact with web servers. Learn to use tools like Google Chrome Developer Tools to inspect HTTP requests and responses. Gain knowledge of key client-side technologies including HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, and discover their roles in building web pages and applications with ASP.NET Core.
Developing for the web means developing with Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), so we will start by reviewing this important foundational technology.
Understanding Hypertext Transfer Protocol
To communicate with a web server, the client (also known as the user agent) makes calls over the network using HTTP. As such, HTTP is the technical underpinning of the web. So, when we talk about websites and web services, we mean that they use HTTP to communicate between a client (often a web browser) and a server.
A client makes an HTTP request for a resource, such as a page, uniquely identified by a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), and the server sends back an HTTP response, as shown in the figure:
We can use Google Chrome and other browsers to record requests and responses.
Understanding the components of a URL
A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is made up of several components:
Scheme: http (clear text) or https (encrypted).
Domain: For a production website or service, the top-level domain (TLD) might be example.com. We might have subdomains such as www, jobs, or extranet. During development, we typically use ...