About
Representation is information that is intended to reflect a past, current, or desired state of a given resource , in a format that can be readily communicated via the protocol , and that consists of a set of representation metadata and a potentially unbounded stream of representation data 1.
Since anything can be a resource, and HTTP provides a uniform interface similar to a window through which one can observe and act upon such a thing. Only through the communication of messages to some independent actor on the other side can a representation (REST), is used as an abstraction to represent or take the place of the current or desired state of that thing in communications.
Representation Metadata
Representation header fields provide metadata about the representation. When a message included a payload body , the representation header fields describe how to interpret the representation data enclosed in the payload body. In a response to a HEAD request , the representation header fields describe the representation data that would have been enclosed in the payload body if the same request had been a GET .
The following header fields convey representation metadata:
Representation data
Representation data could also be transferred in HTTP headers , but such data would not be considered a payload2.
Anki
Links
References
Fielding, R.; Nottingham, M.; Reschke, J. (June 2022). HTTP Semantics and Content. “Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1: Semantics and Content”. PDF Document. (Accessed: ). ↩︎
MDN. “Payload body”. Available at: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Payload_body . (Accessed ). ↩︎