One core idea behind HTTP is that the server's response is a function of the request. Conceptually, a web service should have a top-level implementation that can be summarized as follows:
response = httpd(request)
However, this is impractical. It turns out that an HTTP request isn't a simple, monolithic data structure. It has some required parts and some optional parts. A request may have headers, a method and a path, and there may be attachments. The attachments may include forms or uploaded files, or both.
To make things more complex, a browser's form data can be sent as a query string in the path of a GET request. Alternatively, it can be sent as an attachment to a POST request. While there's ...
