httpget

Httpget is a term commonly used to refer to the HTTP GET method, the primary mechanism by which clients retrieve resources from a server. In standards language, HTTP GET is defined as a safe, idempotent request method that requests a representation of the specified resource identified by a URL. The term is sometimes written as httpget to emphasize the operation rather than the protocol. In some programming contexts, httpget may appear as a function name, command, or alias for performing an HTTP GET request.

A GET request consists of a request line that includes the method, the target URL, and the protocol version, followed by optional headers. It generally carries no message body, though the HTTP specification allows a minimal body in some rare cases. The response returns a status line, response headers, and a body containing the resource representation.

GET is designed to be idempotent and safe, meaning repeated identical requests should not cause additional changes on the server. Clients and intermediaries may cache GET responses, and HTTP caching semantics enable efficient reuse. Conditional requests using headers like If-Modified-Since or If-None-Match with ETags help minimize unnecessary data transfer.

In practice, GET is used to fetch HTML pages, images, JSON data, and other resources in web applications and APIs. It is the most common method supported by browsers, curl, wget, and the fetch API in JavaScript.

Security and design implications include avoiding the placement of sensitive information in URLs, since URLs can be logged or cached. For state-changing operations, other methods such as POST should be used. Always prefer HTTPS to protect query strings and responses from eavesdropping.

See also related topics include HTTP methods, RFC 7231, and REST.