Can you explain what headers are in HTTP and HTTPS protocols and what role they play?

HTTP and HTTPS headers are key text fields transmitted with requests or responses. They contain metadata about the message, such as content type, encoding, data length, caching parameters, authorization data, and more.

Role of headers:

• Define how to process the message body (e.g., Content-Type).
• Manage connection behavior (e.g., Connection: keep-alive).
• Transmit client or server information (User-Agent, Server).
• Enable security and authentication mechanisms.

Example HTTP headers:

GET /index.html HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0
Accept: text/html

HTTPS is HTTP over TLS, so headers are the same but transmitted over a secure channel.