Heads up! To view this whole video, sign in with your Courses account or enroll in your free 7-day trial. Sign In Enroll

HTTP Basics

Preview

Start a free Courses trial
to watch this video

Sign up for Treehouse

Sending Data with a GET Request

4:11 with Chris Ramacciotti

Though oftentimes HTTP is used simply for requesting information, without any additional information needed from the requestor, at times, it is necessary to send additional data to the server beyond the name of the resource. In this video, we explore the first way of sending data, and that is via the query string in the URI of a GET request.

This video doesn't have any notes.

Related Discussions

Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.

Sign up

    Related Discussions

    Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.

    Sign up

    Now that we've seen some basic get requests and 0:00
    subsequent responses, let's check out how to send data with an HTTP request. 0:03
    So far, we've simply made requests to view certain resources, and these requests 0:08
    haven't required us to supply additional data related to actual resource requested. 0:13
    Even more, we have yet to send a post request which is used 0:19
    to find the resource requested according to the data included in the request body. 0:23
    Let's take a peek at both of those scenarios now. 0:29
    In the first scenario, we'll consider using a get 0:33
    request to supply additional data related to the resource we're requesting. 0:36
    Let's continue using httpbin.org for our examples. 0:41
    In a get request, you can pass data to the server via the URI and the request line. 0:45
    Let me show you an example. 0:49
    All right, we'll telnet to httpbin.org using port 80. 0:51
    And I will make a get request to the resource name /get and 0:56
    let me throw some data in here and explain to you in a moment what I am doing. 1:00
    Let me hit enter twice. 1:14
    Great. 1:17
    Scroll up to my initial request. 1:18
    Now in this example, I'm requesting the resource at /get, 1:20
    passing a first name and a language in the form of a query string. 1:26
    A query string is simply a sequence of name value pairs where the names and 1:33
    values are separated by an equal sign here and 1:37
    here and the pairs are separated by ampersands. 1:41
    So we have one ampersand between the two name value pairs. 1:45
    When using a query string and a uri, you start with a single question mark. 1:51
    When I make this request, I can see that the server was able to read the data I 1:56
    passed, and use it to put together a response. 2:00
    If I scroll down I see there is the first name that I passed and 2:03
    there is the language that I passed. 2:07
    In this case, HTTP bin gave me a response in JSON format. 2:10
    JSON stands for JavaScript object notation, and 2:14
    is a widely used data format, used frequently in web applications because, 2:17
    well, JavaScript can directly read the data. 2:21
    This kind of data transmission in a get request 2:24
    only helps the server put together an accurate response. 2:27
    It should not actually change anything on the server related to the resource. 2:30
    I can demonstrate this again by making a new request. 2:35
    Let me clear my screen, I'll telnet to httpbin.org at port 80. 2:37
    And let me pass it some different data. 2:43
    /get is the resource that I'm requesting, and I'll pass it a company and a city. 2:45
    HTTP version 1.1. 2:56
    And the host is again httpbin.org. 2:58
    And there I see the company that I sent in the request 3:03
    as well as the city that I sent in the request. 3:06
    One other thing worth pointing out here is the content link header in the response. 3:09
    Whenever there is data in a response body, a content length header will be present 3:15
    indicating the length or the size of the response in bytes. 3:20
    What this means in our case is that the size of the response body is 217 bytes. 3:24
    Using get request to send data is often used in a web forum to search a website. 3:31
    You can simulate this in your browser by typing things like 3:35
    stackoverflow.com/search?q=http or 3:38
    google.com/maps?q=chicago. 3:44
    Those q parameters in the queries string 3:49
    are passed in get request to stack overflow and google maps respectively. 3:53
    The resulting pages show the results of your search. 3:58
    The key here is that in a get request, additional data related to 4:02
    your requested resource is passed as a query string in the URI. 4:06

    You need to sign up for Treehouse in order to download course files.

    Sign up

      You need to sign up for Treehouse in order to set up Workspace

      Sign up