HTTP content

In HTTP messages, the content describes the ‘information’ conveyed in the message body (which follows the header section), after any message framing from HTTP/1.1 chunked transfer encoding has been removed. This was referred to as a “payload” in HTTP/1.1, but message “content” distinguishes from frame payloads in HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 where the data in a single frame could be header data, body data, or other control information.

The purpose of message content in HTTP requests and responses depends on the request method and response status code. For example, in a PUT request, the content represents the desired state of the resource, but in a POST request, it is information to be processed. A 200 OK response to a GET request shows the current state of the resource, while an error response describes the error.