Discovering Request Variables In The Wild

by Alex Coleman  |  Web App, Web Development

This is a free resource from my online course, From Idea To Launch, where I teach you how to build a full Laravel web application, step by step, at beginner's speed. Learn more →

The goal of this exercise is to help you:

  1. Learn to easily identify request variables
  2. Be able reason as to why those pieces of information are being passed in via the URL

The exercise

  1. Find two URLs that use request variables (remember to look for ?variable=value)
  2. In your Field Notes, or notebook, for each of the URLs, answer the following:
    1. Does the URL use multiple request variables?
    2. Write out each individual request variable.
    3. Write down what you think each piece of information being passed in is used for within that web application.

An example

A URL from a Google Search:

https://www.google.com/webhp?q=web%20application&sourceid=chrome-instant&ie=UTF-8

Are there multiple request variables?

Yup!

The request variables:

  • q
  • sourceid
  • ie

What I think they’re being used for:

  • q – this is the term I searched for
  • sourceid – the browser I’m using
  • ie – the character encoding