它是请求或响应体中数据的字节数。主体是出现在标题下面空行之后的部分。

从本页

The most common use of POST, by far, is to submit HTML form data to CGI scripts. In this case, the Content-Type: header is usually application/x-www-form-urlencoded, and the Content-Length: header gives the length of the URL-encoded form data (here's a note on URL-encoding). The CGI script receives the message body through STDIN, and decodes it. Here's a typical form submission, using POST: POST /path/script.cgi HTTP/1.0 From: frog@jmarshall.com User-Agent: HTTPTool/1.0 Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded Content-Length: 32

Content-Length entity-header字段表示发送给接收者的实体体的大小，以OCTETs的十进制数表示，或者在HEAD方法的情况下，表示如果请求是GET，将发送的实体体的大小。

Content-Length = "Content-Length" ":" 1*DIGIT .

一个例子是

内容长度:1024

应用程序应该使用这个字段来指示消息体的传输长度。

在PHP中，你会使用这样的东西。

header("Content-Length: ".filesize($filename));

在“Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded”的情况下，编码后的数据被发送到指定的处理代理，以便您可以设置将要发布的数据的长度或大小。

从这里开始:

The Content-Length entity-header field indicates the size of the entity-body, in decimal number of OCTETs, sent to the recipient or, in the case of the HEAD method, the size of the entity-body that would have been sent had the request been a GET. Content-Length = "Content-Length" ":" 1*DIGIT An example is Content-Length: 3495 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.

我的解释是，这意味着“导线上”的长度，即“编码”内容的长度

根据说明书:

The Content-Length entity-header field indicates the size of the entity-body, in decimal number of OCTETs, sent to the recipient or, in the case of the HEAD method, the size of the entity-body that would have been sent had the request been a GET. Content-Length = "Content-Length" ":" 1*DIGIT An example is Content-Length: 3495 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.

一个八位是8位。Content-length是消息体所代表的字节数。