headerbody

In information technology, headerbody, often written as a single term, refers to the conceptual pairing of a header and a body within a data unit used for communication or storage. The header carries metadata, while the body contains the main payload. The term is descriptive rather than a formal standard.

The header typically includes fields such as message type, version, identifiers, content-length, content-type, routing information, timestamps, and security tokens. The body holds the actual content, which may be text, media, or binary data and may be encoded, compressed, or encrypted.

Headerbody is central to many data formats and network protocols. In email and HTTP, a header section precedes the body, separated by a delimiter or blank line; in MIME, headers define parts with boundaries. In binary protocols, the header may be fixed or variable in size, followed by a length-prefixed body.

Advantages of the headerbody approach include clearer parsing, the ability to route or validate a message based on metadata before processing the body, and support for streaming, where the body can be processed incrementally as it arrives. Design considerations include delimiter design, header-size limits, and how to handle header corruption or partial transmission.

Common implementation patterns involve explicit length fields, delimiter markers, or length-prefixed frames, as well as serialization of headers into JSON or a compact key-value format. The design choice affects compatibility, efficiency, and error handling.