HTTP Library Features

The following list of features are taken form the book RESTful Web Services

HTTPS: It must support HTTPS and SSL certificate validation
HTTP methods: It must support at least the five main HTTP methods: GET, HEAD, POST, PUT, and DELETE. Optional methods OPTIONS and TRACE, and WebDAV extensions like MOVE, .
Custom data : It must allow the programmer to customize the data sent as the entity-body of a PUT or POST request.
Custom headers : It must allow the programmer to customize a request’s HTTP headers
Response Codes : It must give the programmer access to the response code and headers of an HTTP response; not just access to the entity-body.
Proxies: It must be able to communicate through an HTTP proxy
Compression:it should automatically request data in compressed form to save bandwidth, and transparently decompress the data it receives.
Caching:It should automatically cache the responses to your requests.
Auth methods : It should transparently support the most common forms of HTTP authentication: Basic, Digest, and WSSE.
Cookies :It should be able to parse and create HTTP cookie strings
Redirects:It should be able to transparently follow HTTP redirects