Headers and representations
Response headers
Read response headers that describe body content, redirects, caching, cookies, and the server's instructions to the client.
Response headers describe the returned representation and how to handle it.
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Encoding: gzip
Cache-Control: max-age=300Content-Type describes the body. Content-Encoding says the body was compressed. Content-Length gives its byte length when known.
Location points to another URL, usually with a redirect or 201 Created response. Set-Cookie asks a browser to store a cookie. Cache-Control, ETag, and Last-Modified guide caches.
Security headers can restrict what a browser may do with the response. We will cover those later.
Inspect headers in the Network panel instead of guessing. A server, reverse proxy, CDN, or hosting platform may add or replace them.
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