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 based 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 querystring. If the URL of the server is as follows:

http://localhost:8080

Then, we can add something like this:

http://localhost:8080?name=john

Here,?name=john is called a querystring string as it is a string representing a query. In this case, 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 to send parameters. We will begin by looking at how to accept parameters for a GET request since this request is made by simply opening our browser on a specific address. We will see how to handle a POST request through a form later...