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cobbzilla • yesterday at 9:46 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

Maybe dumb question: how does the server “decide” anything other than what file to serve? Today we have many choices but back in the day CGI was the first standard way to do it.

So yes query parameters existed before CGI but to use them you had to hack your server to do something with them (iirc NCSA web servers had some magic hacks for queries). CGI drove standardization.

Replies

stirfish • yesterday at 9:54 PM

    func specialHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
 if time.Now().Weekday() == time.Tuesday {
  http.NotFound(w, r)
  return
 }

     fmt.Fprintln(w, "server made a decision")
    }
Your server can make decisions however you program it to, you know? It's just software.

Forgive the phone-posting.

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