Request Body

After the request headers and an extra CRLF (carriage return and line feed) is the request body.

For GET and DELETE requests, there is no body. For POST, PUT, and PATCH, however, this section should contain the data being sent to the server. If there is a body, the headers should include Content-Type and Content-Length. The Content-Length is always provided as a count of octets (a set of eight bits). Thus, binary data is sent as an octet stream. Text data is typically sent in UTF-8 encoding .

Two body formats bear special mention: application/x-www-form-urlencoded and multipart/form-data. These encodings are commonly used for submitting HTML forms, and will be covered in more detail in the Form Data chapter.