Dynamic Content

A server that serves only static content is useful, but there is much more that can be done. An HTTP server can deliver content depending on a more granular request, which is done by passing some parameters to the server. There are many ways to do so, but one simple way is to pass parameters to a querystring. If the URL of the server is:

http://localhost:8080

We can then add something like:

http://localhost:8080?name=john

Here, the part ?name=john is called a querystring as it is a string representing a query. In this case, this querystring sets a variable called name with a value of john. This way of passing parameters is generally used with GET requests, while a POST request will generally make use of the body of the request in order to send parameters. This does not mean that a GET request does not have a body but is not the standard way to pass parameters to a GET request. We will begin by looking at how to accept parameters for a GET request, as this...