Welcome to Web Concepts!

The Web's Uniform Interface is based on a large and growing set of specifications. These specifications establish the shared concepts that providers and consumers of Web services can rely on. Web Concepts is providing an overview of these concepts and of the specifications defining them.

One example for how this works is HTTP/1.1 Caching, which defines 5 HTTP Header Fields, 7 HTTP Warn Codes, and 12 HTTP Cache Directives. Web Concepts provides a structured, quick, and interlinked overview of these and many more concepts that together establish the Web surface.

The best way to explore Web Concepts is to use one of these starting points:

• Reading the paper or the presentation "Surfing the API Web: Web Concepts" published at the 27th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2018)
• Exploring the Concepts, listing 797 values for 33 Web Concepts (JSON)
• Exploring the Specifications, listing 287 specifications in 6 specification series (JSON)

Web Concepts is openly managed on GitHub; feel free to fork, contribute, comment, or raise issues. The site is generated from structured information representing the individual specifications, with the build process currently being based on XSLT and Jekyll. If you are just interested in the data, read about the JSON representations of Web Concepts.

Recent Updates

• Jun 3, 2019: Wanted: Web Concepts Representation
• May 9, 2018: Web Concepts at Craft 2018
• Apr 26, 2018: Web Concepts at WWW2018
• Mar 28, 2018: Adding HTTP/2 Frame Types
• Oct 11, 2017: Adding XML Namespaces and Schemas

For a complete list, here is the history of all updates; you can subscribe to updates via the feed.