Server

What is a web server?#

The primary task of a web server is to receive the requests from the client and provide the response after executing the business logic based on the request parameters received from the client.

Every online service needs a server to run. Servers running web applications are commonly known as application servers.

Besides the application servers, there are also other kinds of servers with specific tasks assigned. These include:

• Proxy server
• Mail server
• File server
• Virtual server
• Data storage server
• Batch job server and so on

The server configuration and the type can differ depending on the use case. For instance, if we run a backend application code written in Java, we would pick Apache Tomcat or Jetty. For simple use cases such as hosting websites, we would pick the Apache HTTP Server.

In this lesson, we will stick to the application server.

All the components of a web application need a server to run, be it a database, a message queue, a cache, or any other component. In modern application development, even the user interface is hosted separately on a dedicated server.

Server-side rendering#

Often the developers use a server to render the user interface on the backend and then send the generated data to the client. This technique is known as server-side rendering. I will discuss the pros and cons of client-side vs. server-side rendering further down the course.

Now we have a fundamental understanding of the client and the server. Let’s delve into the concepts involved in the communication between them.