HTTP Developer's Handbook

honestpuck writes "To say that understanding HTTP is crucial for web development might seem like saying water is wet, yet many people don't take the time to fully understand the protocol. This book could be a good help. HTTP Developer's Handbook from SAMS gives you a great deal of information about the protocol in a clearly understood fashion." Read on for the rest of honestpuck's review. HTTP Developer's Handbook author Chris Shiflett pages 280 publisher Developer's Library/SAMS rating 6 - Serious flaws reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0672324547 summary Mixed volume with fair look at HTTP protocol

One of the strangest feelings I've ever had reading a book is that I have a better opinion of it than does the author. Shiflett spends most of the introduction convincing the reader that this is a useful book and it seems that the start of most chapters is another few sentences telling me why the chapter is incredibly useful for me to read. I felt like yelling "I'm convinced, I'm convinced."

The book is broken up into 6 parts: 'Introducing HTTP,' 'HTTP Definition,' 'Maintaining State,' 'Performance,' 'Security,' and 'Evolution of HTTP.'

The first section and a large part of the introduction are the sort of information that is covered elsewhere in just as good a detail: it basically covers the obvious. The second section covers the HTTP protocol itself, with a good discussion of requests and responses, including all the nitty gritty details of the headers in some detail. This is the really useful heart of the book and it covers 80 of the 280 pages. The third, fourth and fifth sections give a too-concise look at their subject matter, I felt the book could have given much more detail here. The last section is a waste of space; in this volume I don't really need to have a small amount of information about SOAP and XML-RPC.

This book is well-written; I believe its two fatal flaws are that Shiflett seems unsure of his own book and that the book itself tries to offer everything for a developer while explaining it all for the newcomer. I think that had Shiflett given up on the newcomer and given the developer greater depth (with a lot more examples) he would have delivered a much better book. For a developer, the volume is much too light on example code, the book is not really 'practical,' more 'informative.'

This might be a good volume for a library, either a corporate or school library. It provides the salient information in one spot in a concise and readable manner. I think that an individual might find it a less than totally useful book for the money -- you're likely to have already have a volume or two that covers most of the information, and with most languages in web development having libraries that take care of most of the low-level stuff for you, it becomes less and less necessary to really understand the bottom level. Personally, I'll keep it for the 80 page section on the HTTP definition so I have it all in one spot.

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Comments

My Book Report, by honestpuck

[Anonymous Coward]

Fellow Slashdotters, prepare to be dazzled! Well, as Timothy already mentioned, the name of the book that I read was HTTP Developer's Handbook. It's about these ... protocols. HTTPD ... with requests ... and ... responses ... and XML-RPC ... Did I mention this book was written by a guy named Chris Shiflett? And published by the good people at Developer's Library/SAMS. So, in conclusion, on the Slashdot scale of one to ten, ten being the highest, one being the lowest, and five being average, I give this book ... a six. Any questions? Nope? Then I'll just sit down.

Re:w3c

[Serapth]

I was thinking the exact same thing... what the hell would a book about HTTP teach you, that you cant already get for free at w3c?

That said... who really expected the book to be anything other then bad? Hell, its is SAMS we are talking about! Home of the Teach Yourself your an Idiot, in 24 Hours! series of books.

I long ago swore I would never again buy a book from SAMS press... and, unlike the time long ago when I swore I would never have another cigarette... Ive actually never bought another one of their crappy ass books! And I sleep better at night because of it.

So, in summary... if SAMS published it... it probrably sucks ass.
Cheers.

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[DNS-and-BIND]

notepad? PICO???

HAHAHAHA

And he thinks he's a bad-ass hardcore HTML ninja...

Re:HTTP knowledge required?

[DNS-and-BIND]

It wraps lines? It lacks features? Why not tell me what's RIGHT about pico instead? The telltale sign of a cluebie..."what's wrong with pico"? I bet you don't even use pine. What's copycon? I get "Bad command or file name" if I type that into my copy of DOS 5.0.

C'mon kiddo, it's past your bedtime. Put away the web-ninja costume and put on your spiderman pajamas.