Deal with the Host header field

Fast sloth — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 12:45:00 +0000

Introduction

Performing HTTP requests is a routine task for a web developer nowadays.

This action contains, though, a number of things that are not necessarily well understood.

The Host header

One of these things is the Host header.

The Host header is a required one in HTTP requests:

A client MUST send a Host header field in an HTTP/1.1 request even if
the request-target is in the absolute-form, since this allows the
Host information to be forwarded through ancient HTTP/1.0 proxies
that might not have implemented Host.

Wait a moment! How come I've never needed to deal with it ? How come it does not ring a bell with me ?

These questions are absolutely legit.
Since Host is required, browsers and even curl set it by default to the provided hostname.

Example

Try to run these commands from your terminal:

request with hostname ✅

❯ curl -vvvI stackoverflow.com

> HEAD / HTTP/1.1
> Host: stackoverflow.com
> User-Agent: curl/7.64.1
> Accept: */*
>

request with ip address ❌

❯ curl -vvvI 151.101.65.69

> HEAD / HTTP/1.1
> Host: 151.101.65.69
> User-Agent: curl/7.64.1
> Accept: */*
>

Please notice the line > Host: for each command 💡. Got it?

Let's talk about the wrong request.
If you execute the command number 2, you will notice that the response is an error.
This is due to the fact that when the request arrives til stackoverflow server, it cannot go any further as one IP address can host many websites.
So the web server gets confused and most likely returns 500 Domain Not Found.

Conclusion

Knowing how to deal with the Host header comes in handy when one needs to connect to a website through an ssh tunnel for instance.

A Post is coming soon to explain how this can be done 🚀.

Vim that!!

Fast sloth — Sun, 27 Jun 2021 17:17:06 +0000

I vim
You vim
He/She vims
we vim
You vim
they vim

Introduction

Vim's powerful. (I love vim)
Vim's easy. (I use vim on daily basis)

I bet you agree JUST with the first statement, don't you?

Well, let me just explain something and we'll talk about vim being easy or hard.

It's all about understanding the key-parts

In order to leverage the most of vim without spending a lot of time, we need to be smart.

How to talk to vim

Let's get started with an extremely important part.
vim has three important things that are surely required steps to master it.

Verbs
Modifiers
Nouns

# sample.txt

Line 1 before comma, after comma.

I open the file sample.txt and I put my cursor on the f of before.

If I type dt,, sample.txt will turn into:

# sample.txt

Line 1 be, after comma.

Let's break dt, down:

d (verb): delete
t (modifier): until
, (noun): comma

It makes a lot more sense now!
dt, -> delete until the next ,

What's next ?

I'll leave it there.

You can easily look for vim verbs/modifiers/nouns on google.

Conclusion

vim is about continuous learning on a daily basis, at least from my point of view.

DEV Community: Fast sloth

Deal with the *Host* header field

Introduction

The Host header

Example

Conclusion

Vim that!!

Introduction

It's all about understanding the key-parts

How to talk to vim

What's next ?

Conclusion

Deal with the Host header field