• Understanding the Structure of Surfing
• Using the HTTP Recipes Web Site
• Understanding HTTP Requests

    This book will show how to create HTTP programs in Java. HTTP programming allows programs to be constructed that retrieve information from web sites in much the same way as a human user surfs the web. These programs are called bots. This book will present many useful recipes for commonly performed HTTP programming tasks. Using these recipes a wide array of bots can be constructed.

    To create HTTP programs with Java an understanding of the structure of HTTP requests is required. This chapter will introduce this structure. Understanding this structure will allow the programmer to create programs that surf the web just as a user does.