Handling Browser/Servercommunications

While the Request and Responseobjects deal with separate parts of the interaction between browser and server, we'vedecided to talk about them jointly, because when you make a request, the onlyway you can actually know if the request has succeeded is to use the Response object to return therequisite information. Similarly, it's pretty hard to talk about the Response object without mentioning the Request object, because it's common to use the resultof a client's request to generate a response on the web server. However, you shouldn't assume that they're similar: while theseobjects often require each other to be able to return information to the user,the actual properties and methods of each object are completely different.

Let's do a very quick retread over what happens when a webbrowser or another client application asks for a page from a web server. Thisis known as making a request. In order tomake a request from the server, the client must supply the specific page usingan address (usually a URL); in addition, the client can send a whole host ofother information to the server. The Requestobject is responsible for packaging all this information, and making it easilyaccessible to the ASP application. When the client asks the server to provide apage with an .asp suffix, this suffix tells theserver to process any server-side scripting as part of an ASP Page. All of theinformation that the client sends along with the request is then packaged intothe Request object. This information is thenaccessible to the ASP script that is used to dynamically construct the pagethat the user has requested.