Unlock the Power of HTTP Requests and Responses

In today's digital landscape, data sharing is crucial among various software applications, including web and mobile apps, to gain insights and drive impact. As the most widely adopted and robust protocol, HTTP plays a vital role in exposing data to diverse applications, making it an essential tool for developers. In fact, according to recent statistics, over 80% of web traffic relies on HTTP requests and responses.

Getting Started with Go

If you're new to Go, start by downloading the suitable binary release for your system from the official Go website: https://golang.org/dl/. Follow the instructions to install the package, and then proceed to the distribution file, which should be installed to /usr/local/go.

Next, set the PATH of the Go distribution to make the Go command accessible. You can do this by running the following command:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin

For more information on mastering HTTP server creation with Go, visit computerstechnicians.com.

Building an HTTP Server with Go

Creating an HTTP server in Go is remarkably straightforward. You simply need to import the “net/http” package and define the HTTP listen port and server. Paste the following code into your first server.go file and save it:

package mainimport (	"net/http")func main() {	http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)}

Navigate to your working server.go file directory and build and run your Go server using $ go run server.go. Then, copy the following URL into your browser and press enter:

http://localhost:8080/

You should see the following response in your browser:

404 page not found

The 404 response is expected at this point, as we haven’t created the /(root) handler yet. The updated version of your server.go file will be discussed in the next section.

package mainimport (	"fmt"	"net/http")func main() {	const PORT = 8080	http.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {		fmt.Fprintf(w, "This is a basic HTTP request processor")	})	http.ListenAndServe(fmt.Sprintf(":%d", PORT), nil)}

Access the following URL in your web browser:

 http://localhost:8080/ 

This time, you should be able to see the following response in your browser:

This is a basic http request processor

We hope you found this informative!