Entity Header

Entity headers are HTTP headers that provide information about the body of a message. They can appear in both requests and responses, describing properties of the content such as type, length, encoding, or last modification date.

Important Entity Headers:

1. Content-Type

• Specifies the media type (MIME type) of the content.
• Example:

Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8

2. Content-Length

• Indicates the size of the content in bytes.
• Example:

Content-Length: 1024

3. Content-Encoding

• Shows if the content has been compressed (e.g., gzip).
• Example:

Content-Encoding: gzip

4. Content-Language

• Specifies the language of the content.
• Example:

Content-Language: de-DE

5. Cache-Location

• Indicates the URL or storage location of the actual resource.
• Example:

Content-Location: /files/document.pdf

6. Last-Modified

• Specifies when the content was last changed.
• Example:

Last-Modified: Tue, 30 Jan 2025 14:20:00 GMT

7. ETag

• A unique identifier for a version of the resource, useful for caching.
• Example:

ETag: "abc123xyz"

8. Expires

• Indicates when the content should be considered outdated.
• Example:

Expires: Fri, 02 Feb 2025 12:00:00 GMT

9. Allow

• Lists the allowed HTTP methods for a resource.
• Example:

Allow: GET, POST, HEAD

10. Refresh  (Not standardized but often used)

• Instructs the browser to refresh the page after a specified time.
• Example:

Refresh: 10; url=https://example.com

These headers help describe the content of an HTTP message, optimize caching strategies, and ensure correct rendering.