Is it possible to send HTTP request using plain socket connection and receive response without headers?

Question

experts

I am trying to implement a downloader which handles HTTP protocol, I am able to send HTTP request using the following code:

StringBuilder request = new StringBuffer().append("GET ").append(uri.getPath());
if(uri.getQuery() != null)
    request.append('?').append(uri.getQuery());
request.append(" HTTP/1.1\nHost: ").append(uri.getHost()).append("\nAccept: */*\n\n");

// send the request
outputStream.write(request.toString().getBytes("utf-8"));
outputStream.flush();

On receiving the response, I will need to save the body of the response to disk, and the job is done.

My question is: are there any HTTP headers that I can set for the request which will cause the server to send the response without HTTP headers(only the body)?

The reason why I am asking this question is that if that is possible, I don't need to skip the HTTP headers manually when reading the response, I can directly start reading raw bytes from the input stream. all I want is the body of the response, the HTTP headers don't matter much in this case.

Answer 1

If you don't control the server then probably not. If you do, then depending on what you're using server side you might be able to send a response without headers.

It looks like you're using Java and I suspect there's libraries to help you extract the response without parsing it yourself. That would be better than trying to hack together a response without headers.

Answer 2

that is the HTTP protocol is working. You always get headers in response. I am pretty sure, Java has a ready to use http client somewhere. i suggest you use it.

Answer 3

No, you will always get the header back. And you will have to parse it since the resource you are trying to retrieve might come in different encodings and/or in multiple parts.

On the other hand, this has been done for you already by tools like wget(1) . You can either just use them, or look into the source to figure out what you need to do programmatically.