10/22/12--Databases

Now onto the nitty gritty stuff. Most web pages that provide access to data use the HTML “FORM” element to collect inquiries from the user. FORM is a particular set of HTML tags that produce interactive document elements in which browser users can enter data of various types.


The browser remembers every option and piece of text that a user provides in a form. The FORM has two ways of sending data: GET and POST. GET sends the data to some destination URL with the submission data encoded into the URL with a series of ?, =, &, and other punctuation. POST sends the data to the receiving URL’s “standard input” (a fancy way of saying it is all sent after the initial request for the new page goes through). POST requires some kind of receiving program to eat up the incoming data


To maximize both efficiency and simplicity, the website will use a POST to keep the web name easiest to access. The address of "www.rentacat.com" will be the universally known name. While the URL may actually be longer than that, using POST will keep the name short, sweet, and to the whiskery point.