Sending form data

Client/server architecture

An HTML form on a web page is nothing more than a convenient user-friendly way to configure an HTTP request to send data to a server. This enables the user to provide information to be delivered in the HTTP request.

On the client side

The form element defines how the data will be sent. All of its attributes are designed to let you configure the request to be sent when a user hits a submit button. The two most important attributes are action and method.

On the server side

Whichever HTTP method you choose, the server receives a string that will be parsed in order to get the data as a list of key/value pairs. The way you access this list depends on the development platform you use and on any specific frameworks you may be using with it.