HTTP Entity Header Content-Length
External
- Content-Length: https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.13
- Message length https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec4.html#sec4.4
Internal
Overview
The Content-Length indicates the size of the entity body sent, sent to the recipient, in bytes. In the case of the HEAD method, the size of the entity body that would have been sent had the request been a GET.
Applications SHOULD use this field to indicate the transfer-length of the message-body, unless this is prohibited by the rules in section 4.4.
Any Content-Length greater than or equal to zero is a valid value. Section 4.4 describes how to determine the length of a message-body if a Content-Length is not given.
Note that the meaning of this field is significantly different from the corresponding definition in MIME, where it is an optional field used within the "message/external-body" content-type. In HTTP, it SHOULD be sent whenever the message's length can be determined prior to being transferred, unless this is prohibited by the rules in section 4.4.