What is the HTTP Protocol?

A protocol is nothing but a set of rules that govern communication. The HTTP protocol is a stateless protocol that follows the request-response pattern.

HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol and is an application protocol which is designed for distributed hypermedia systems. HyperText in HyperText Transfer Protocol refers to the structured text that uses hyperlinks for traversing between the documents. Standards for HTTP were developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The current version of HTTP is HTTP/2 and was standardized in 2015. It is supported by the majority of web browsers, such as Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox.