Get HTTP Headers

What are HTTP Headers?

The main role of an HTTP headers is a key-value pair sent from client to server in the request or response. They carry important details of the request or response, like media type, encoding, status codes and etc.

Why Use "Get HTTP Headers"?

• Debugging: Help diagnose problems with web requests and responses.
• Headers Security Analysis: Checking headers (Content-Security-Policy and X-Frame-Options etc) relevant for security.
• These are IP Blacklist, Performance Optimization by analyzing Cache-Control as caching header to optimize performance of the website.
• SEO insights such as status codes (301, 404), and canonical headers.
• Content Negotiation: Know how various content types and encodings are dealt with.

How to Use "Get HTTP Headers"

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• Use a Credible Source: There are many online sources that can be used to fetch the HTTP headers viz. WebSniffer, SecurityHeaders and Developer Tools of browsers among others
• URL: Please enter the URL of page that you want to analyze.
• Perform Request: The tool will create an HTTP request to send it to the server.
• Inspect Headers — Aside from going over the HTTP headers that are sent back, typically a combination of request and [response] headers.
• Process the Data: Debug, improve performance; even more secure using different datacenters.

Here are some Advantages of Using “Get HTTP Headers”

• In-depth Investigation: Know the entire process of client-server communication.
• Security Enhancements: Find security flaws and configuration errors that might exist.
• Improved Performance Test: Analyze and adjust headers to energize the speed of your website.
• Improved SEO: Make sure your HTTP headers are optimized for great SEO.
• Web traffic: Have an effective approach to communicate on the web in a safe way [User experience]

Common HTTP Headers

• Content-Type: Media type of the resource (html, json)
• Are you supporting the Content-Length header, and if so, what is the size of the response body in bytes?
• Server - Info of the software running at server which served your request.
• The unleash date and time of the reply.
• Cache-Control: Caching mechanisms along the request/response chain
• Set-Cookie: The server sends cookies to the client.
• Authorization : Is Credentials for authorizing the client towards server.
• Redirect Location: Represents a URL to redirect from one page another location.

Top “Get HTTP Headers” Tools

• WebSniffer: Descriptive headers and request/response info.
• SecurityHeaders: Concentrates on security type of HTTP headers and gives the grade of how secure those are.
• Postman: Postman is a great tool to test API and it shows http headers.
• Chrome, Firefox and Edge — Browser Developer Tools – Technology provided within the browsers to inspect http headers.
• cURL: Command Line URL for transfer data with HTTP requests and displaying responses headers.

HTTP—Headers Analysis Tips

• Find Status Codes: Verify status codes ( for example 200 OK,404 Not Found ) to see what has result of the request.
• Cache Performance: Examine caching headers (e.g. Cache-Control, Expires etc) to get your performance optimized
• Check Security — Make sure security headers like Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options and Strict Transport Security is properly configured.
• Content Negotiation: Know Accept header, Content-Type etc. to great detail How content types are negotiated with headers like an “Accept”?
• Observations for Redirects: Lookout for Observables like Location Header to get IRIs about redirects and make sure that they are implemented properly.

Conclusion

Get HTTP Headers — A Must Have Tool For Web Dev, QA And Admin Ausaf WiFi Follow Nov 5 · 4 min read It helps to troubleshoot problems, security checks as well as SEO, performance optimization by providing detailed insights into HTTP headers of web requests and responses. Whether you're troubleshooting an issue, tuning performance, or locking down your site, a knowledge of HTTP headers is essential to great web communication.

Ratan Agrahari

CEO / Co-Founder

Life's small blessings appreciate them. One day will be the little things — you may look back and see they were big. Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who had kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.