Aspiring Dev here but still struggling to know the basics of Web Apps and Websites. Maybe you guys can help me to further understand everything. Thank you! 🙂
In: Technology
Imagine there’s a toy store and you want a toy. The toy store is like the “web server,” and you are the “client.” You (the client) send a message to the toy store (the server) saying, “I want a red car!” This is like opening an app on your tablet and pressing a button.
The store (server) listens to your request, checks if they have the toy, and starts finding the red car. Once the store finds the toy (server gets the information), it sends it back to you (the client). The red car shows up in front of you on your tablet screen.
So, you asked for a toy, the store got your request, found the toy, and sent it back to you.
A client makes requests. A server listens and responds to them. That’s the basics of a client-server relationship.
A client can be a web browser, or a mobile app, or even a desktop app. The server doesn’t have to care.
With a web-based system, they are typically HTTP requests and responses. Hyper Text Transfer Protocol specifies how requests and responses are structured as text, usually as a payload within TCP packets. TCP/IP is the basis for internet communication. Many modern web applications use REST, which is just another layer of standardisation that specifies how to use HTTP requests to interact with a web service to send and receive data or perform certain functions.
Any more detail than that and you’re starting to talk about implementation details of specific systems, which isn’t suitable for ELI5.
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