HTTP/HTTPS and Web Server Fundamentals Lab

🛠 Lab from the Platform Engineering Bootcamp. Used in Week 4. Bootcamp landing page: https://academy.tekanaid.com/bootcamps/platform-engineering-bootcamp Parent course(s):

• Week 4: Networking Fundamentals for Platform Engineers (slug: networking-fundamentals-platform-engineers)

In this hands-on lab, you'll learn HTTP protocol fundamentals by building and testing a web server with Nginx. You'll practice HTTP methods, understand status codes and headers, and implement HTTPS security with SSL/TLS certificates.

You'll use curl to test different HTTP methods, analyze request/response headers, create a simple Flask API, and configure SSL certificates for encrypted communication.

By the end of this lab, you'll understand:

• HTTP protocol basics (requests, responses, methods, status codes)
• HTTP headers and their purposes
• Testing APIs with curl flags and options
• Nginx web server configuration
• SSL/TLS certificate generation and installation
• HTTP vs HTTPS security differences
• Debugging common HTTP errors