Serving Content Over The Web

What Is A Server

A Server is a computer. When it comes to the internet, there are "web servers". "web servers" are computers (servers) that...

• have http* server tooling (like node's built-in http module) which...
  • listening for requests over the http protocol
  • responds to requests (typically from a browser or http client) and sends to the requester some data

When going to a browser (google chrome, safari, firefox, opera, edge, brave, etc) and typing in a url www.google.com, the browser is making a request to the internet which eventually makes it to a server where the google website is served by a server.

sequenceDiagram
  participant Browser

  Browser->>Web Server: REQUEST <br/> Hey web server, can I view this website?

  loop Handling the Request
  Web Server->>Web Server: - Receive Request <br/> - Use a "handler" <br/> - Prepare The Response
  end

  Web Server-->>Browser: RESPONSE: Here's what you asked for!

*Notes

• http could also leverage http/2 and/or https
• for code examples of the http server, see these trivial examples to get started