Guide: Anatomy of an HTTP Transaction

[bengl]

(Not sold on the title. Ideas pls!)

I have a lot of time on planes coming up in the next few weeks so I thought I'd seize the opportunity. I'd like to put together a in-depth guide on how HTTP requests are handled. This could be a replacement for, or something to go alongside, a "Your First Webserver" guide.

I'd start it out with a very basic web server (possibly all at once, possibly bit by bit as concepts are introduced, haven't decided yet), and iterate through basically every line explaining what is going on. I want to break down the order in which things happen, which events get fired when, etc., which is often a source of confusion. I'd be gearing this toward people who are brand new to node, maybe have done a "Your First Webserver" tutorial or something (or maybe not) and want to get a better understanding of what's actually happening.

How's that sound?

[bnb]

Sounds good. I actually did a post very similar to this for Modulus a while ago; would there be interest in pulling that? I have no problems with it, and Modulus is a Foundation member. @mikeal is the only person I know that would have any idea, although I'm sure there are others.

[bengl]

Yeah happy to pull from that if it's cool with everyone. Less work that way :)

[bnb]

Just to be clear to everyone, we'd still need to give 100% credit to Modulus. Having some sort of system in place where foundation members can sponsor or share guides (or whatever we're calling them) that are officially credited to them, and which we publicize the publication of. The @nodejs/evangelism WG might have some ideas on this.

[chrisdickinson]

@bnb I am not sure how I feel about that — it kind of sets an odd precedent for the project. For instance, hypothetically, npm, (or Walmart, or Yahoo) might see that certain parts of the docs have advertising for the company that donated them on the page, and might (reasonably) insist that all pages that their developers donate their efforts towards carry their logo as well. I lean towards accepting no-strings-attached donations of documentation or producing original content. In the meantime while we work on original documentation we can certainly link to external docs, though!

@bengl if you'd like to take a stab at writing an article like this that would be absolutely rad. It seems pretty well targeted: newbies who have just gotten done with the first tutorial and are interested in learning more. 👍 go for it!

[bengl]

Closed by #27