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This repository contains the support materials for a tutorial introducing the
basics of HTTP by building a simple HTTP server from scratch.

Unless otherwise attributed, all of the content is licensed with a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/


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Demystify the Web: Build a Dynamic HTTP Server from Scratch

We will cover just enough networking and HTTP to build a simple working server.
You will finish this tutorial with a 100 line HTTP server and completely
understand it. We'll be working in Python, but this content transcends language
and is useful in nearly every language and OS. This will be a hands-on tutorial
with three labs.

Modern web frameworks hide most of the messy details of web programming and
present a powerful abstration for us to work with. Unfortunately, they often
hide the simplicity of HTTP itself. If you’re new to web programming, or have
only used frameworks, it is hard to see exactly what an HTTP header is, or how
an HTTP verb is specified on the wire. In this tutorial, we’re going to start
at the bottom, and work our way up to the HTTP fundamentals common to all web
frameworks. As complex as web programming can be, we'll see that HTTP is clear
and simple.

We will look at basic TCP/IP, the socket abstraction, request/response
protocols, HTTP verbs, and HTTP headers. Each of these is a topic worthy of in
depth study itself... but we're going to skim them all, taking just what we
need to build a working HTTP server.

Prerequisites:

 * Comfortability with some programming language: variables, string manipulation, for loops and function calls.
 * You will need a laptop with Python 2.x installed. (2.7 recommended).
 * It will be convenient to have either GIT or SVN installed.