Which encoding is used by the HTTP protocol?

http http-headers protocols network-protocols
skinner picture skinner · May 4, 2009 · Viewed 13.5k times · Source

When a browser sends an HTTP request to a web server, what encoding is used to encode the HTTP protocol on the wire? Is it ASCII? UTF8? or UTF16? Or does it specify which encoding it uses in a predefined format (before any decoding takes place?)

P.S I'm not asking about the actual payload (e.g. HTML) of the request/response. I'm asking about the request line (i.e. GET /index.html HTTP/1.1) and headers (i.e. Host: google.com)

Answer

Gumbo picture Gumbo · May 4, 2009

HTTP 1.1 uses US-ASCII as basic character set for the request line in requests, the status line in responses (except the reason phrase) and the field names but allows any octet in the field values and the message body.

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