Content-Length

The Content-Length header simply indicates the length of the content section of the HTTP message in bytes. An example of this header is given in the following HTTP response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK 
Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 12:34:56 GMT 
Content-Type: text/html 
Content-Length: 102 

<html> 
<head> 
<title>Content-Length Example</title> 
</head> 
<body> 
Content-Length: 102 
</body> 
</html>

In this example, the number of bytes between the first character of the content (the < of <html>) and the final character of the content (the > of </html>) inclusively is 102.

As I briefly mentioned in the discussion of the Connection general header, the Content-Length header is necessary when persistent connections are being used (and content is expected) in ...

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