Before REST APIs: How Developers Handled HTTP Requests and Responses

Online Shopping November 02, 2025

In today’s web development world, REST APIs are the foundation of modern communication between client and server. But have you ever wondered how things worked before REST APIs became the standard? Let’s take a quick journey back in time to understand the earlier methods developers used to handle HTTP requests and responses — and how we arrived at the simplicity of REST.

🌐 The Early Days of Web Communication

Before REST APIs came into the picture, handling HTTP requests and generating responses was a more manual and complex process. Developers had to write code that directly interacted with the server, managed connections, and generated responses in specific formats.

Two of the most common technologies used during that time were CGI scripts and Java Servlets — and later, JSP (JavaServer Pages) joined the scene to make things a bit more dynamic.

⚙️ CGI Scripts: The Starting Point

CGI (Common Gateway Interface) was one of the first methods used to make web pages dynamic. It allowed web servers to execute external programs (like Perl, C, or Python scripts) to generate web content dynamically.

However, CGI had a major drawback — each request started a new process on the server. This made it inefficient and slow when handling multiple requests simultaneously. As websites grew, CGI became harder to scale.

Example workflow:

  1. A user submits a form.

  2. The web server triggers a CGI script.

  3. The script runs independently, processes the data, and sends back an HTML response.

It worked — but it wasn’t ideal for high-traffic web applications.

☕ The Rise of Java Servlets

To overcome the limitations of CGI, Java introduced Servlets. Servlets are Java classes that run inside a web server and handle HTTP requests and responses efficiently without creating a new process for every request.

How Servlets Work:

  1. A client (like a browser) sends an HTTP request.

  2. The request is received by the Servlet container (like Apache Tomcat).

  3. The Servlet processes the request and returns a response — often HTML or JSON.

Advantages:

  • Faster than CGI (no new process per request)

  • Can maintain sessions and cookies

  • Integrates well with Java-based web applications

This was a huge step forward in building reliable, scalable web systems.

🧩 JSP (JavaServer Pages): Making Web Pages Dynamic

While Servlets were powerful, they required a lot of Java code to output HTML. To simplify this, JSP (JavaServer Pages) was introduced. It allowed developers to mix HTML with Java code directly in the same file.

For example, a JSP page could look like this:

<html>
<body>
    <h1>Welcome, <%= request.getParameter("username") %>!</h1>
</body>
</html>

This made it easier for developers to build dynamic, data-driven web pages without writing full-fledged Servlets for every task.

JSP + Servlets Combo:

  • JSP handled the presentation (front-end part)

  • Servlets handled the business logic (backend part)

Together, they formed the backbone of early Java-based web applications.

🚀 Then Came REST APIs

With time, web applications became more complex, and the need for standardized, lightweight communication grew. That’s where REST (Representational State Transfer) came in.

REST APIs allowed developers to send and receive data in structured formats like JSON, using simple HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE.
They made it possible for front-end applications (like React, Angular, or mobile apps) to talk to back-end servers cleanly and efficiently.

Benefits of REST APIs:

  • Platform-independent

  • Easy to integrate with modern front-end frameworks

  • Stateless and scalable

  • Reusable and maintainable

🧠 Summary: From Complexity to Simplicity

EraTechnologyDescription
Early WebCGI ScriptsExecuted external programs for each request; slow and resource-heavy.
Java EraServletsJava-based server-side processing; more efficient and scalable.
Dynamic ContentJSPCombined HTML and Java code for dynamic pages.
Modern WebREST APIsLightweight, standardized, and framework-friendly communication.

💬 Final Thoughts

Before REST APIs simplified everything, developers had to manually handle how servers talked to browsers. From CGI scripts that spawned new processes for every request to the robust Servlets and JSPs that powered dynamic web pages — each phase shaped the modern web we know today.

REST didn’t replace these technologies overnight, but it refined the idea of server-client interaction into a clean, scalable, and universal standard that changed the way we build applications forever.

🧩 Bonus Tip for Developers

If you’re learning web development today, try exploring:

  • How a Servlet processes a request

  • How JSP renders a dynamic page

  • How REST APIs communicate with front-end frameworks

Understanding these foundations will make you a stronger and more versatile developer.

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