Request
A request is the act or an instance of asking for something to be given, done, or permitted, typically in a polite, formal, or official manner.[1][2] In everyday communication, requests serve as a fundamental element of social interaction, often structured to convey a speaker's desire while respecting the hearer's autonomy, and they can range from casual inquiries to structured petitions.[3] In linguistics, a request is classified as a directive speech act, where the speaker aims to prompt the hearer to perform an action that aligns with the speaker's goal but is not presumed to be obligatory, distinguishing it from commands or orders.[4][5] Legally, a request denotes a formal application or petition submitted to a court, authority, or party, seeking specific relief, information, or action, such as in discovery processes or administrative proceedings.[6] In computer science, particularly in client-server architectures and web technologies, a request refers to a structured message initiated by a client—such as a web browser or application—to a server, soliciting resources, data, or services like loading a webpage or executing an API call.[7][8] This model underpins protocols like HTTP, where requests include methods (e.g., GET or POST) to specify the desired operation.[7]General usage
Noun
In English, the noun "request" primarily denotes the act or instance of asking for something to be given, done, or provided, often in a polite or formal manner, or the specific thing that is asked for.[1] This usage emphasizes a non-binding solicitation, where the recipient has the option to comply or refuse without coercion.[2] The term originates from the mid-14th century, borrowed from Old French requeste (modern French requête), meaning "a thing asked for" or "petition," which itself derives from Vulgar Latin requaestita, the feminine past participle of requaerere, an alteration of Latin requirere "to seek, ask, or examine."[9] By the late 14th century, it had evolved in Middle English to encompass both the action of asking and the object sought, reflecting its roots in seeking favor or information.[10] Examples of usage include formal contexts, such as "The committee approved her request for an extension," and informal ones, like a casual "request" among acquaintances for assistance with a task.[11] In social interactions, requests differ from informal asks by their structured or explicit nature, often involving protocols in professional or institutional settings. Unlike demands, which assert a right or impose obligation through authority or insistence, requests maintain a courteous tone and respect for autonomy, allowing for negotiation or denial.Verb
As a verb, "request" primarily means to ask for something in a polite or formal manner, or to express a desire for an action to be taken.[1][12] It functions as a transitive verb, typically taking a direct object such as the item sought or the person addressed, and is often followed by prepositions like "from" or clauses introduced by "that."[11] For instance, one might say, "She requested additional time from her supervisor," or "The committee requested that the report be submitted by Friday."[3] This usage is prevalent in professional settings, such as customer service interactions or official correspondence, where it conveys courtesy without implying urgency or command.[2] In terms of conjugation, the verb follows standard English patterns for regular verbs: the third-person singular present tense is "requests," the simple past and past participle are "requested," and the present participle is "requesting."[13][14] It can also appear in infinitive forms like "to request" or gerunds such as "requesting," as in "Requesting approval is the first step in the process."[15] Historically, the verb emerged in the mid-16th century from the noun form, initially meaning to express a wish or seek permission, evolving from earlier senses tied to formal appeals.[9] The word's roots trace back to Middle English around 1485, derived from Old French "requester," which itself stems from Vulgar Latin *requaesita, meaning "things asked for," ultimately from Latin "requirere" ("to seek" or "to ask").[16][9] In medieval contexts, it often denoted legal or petitionary pleas, such as supplications in court or ecclesiastical documents, reflecting a formal demand for redress.[17] Over time, by the 18th century, its application broadened to encompass everyday polite inquiries, aligning with shifts in social etiquette toward indirectness and deference in communication.[16] This evolution mirrors analogous concepts in modern technology, like an HTTP request serving as a polite query to a server for data.[1]Computing and technology
Computer science concepts
In computer science, the concept of a "request" originated in the 1960s alongside structured programming paradigms, which emphasized modular code organization through procedure calls that invoked specific subroutines or functions to perform tasks, replacing unstructured jumps like goto statements. This approach, formalized in seminal work on flow diagrams and language structures, enabled programmers to issue targeted requests for computation without disrupting program flow, laying the groundwork for reliable software design.[18] By the 1970s, this evolved further in object-oriented programming languages like Smalltalk, where requests became central to inter-object interactions. In object-oriented programming, a request manifests as a message sent from one object to another, prompting the receiver to execute a corresponding method or provide a service while maintaining encapsulation of internal state.[19] Pioneered in Smalltalk, this message-passing model treats computation as a series of requests, where the sender specifies the action but the receiver determines the implementation, supporting dynamic polymorphism and late binding.[19] For instance, a client object might send a request to a server object for data processing, such as sorting a list, without accessing the server's internal algorithms directly; the interaction occurs entirely within the program's memory space, independent of external transmission. Beyond object-oriented contexts, requests appear in general system interactions as calls for resources or actions within software architectures, including application programming interface (API) invocations and inter-process communication (IPC). An API request allows one software component to solicit functionality from another, defining how information is requested and what is returned, often through standardized methods like function calls.[20] In IPC, requests facilitate coordination between concurrent processes, typically via message-passing primitives such as send and receive operations that exchange data without shared memory access. These mechanisms ensure modular resource allocation, such as one process requesting computational support from another in a multi-threaded application. This foundational intra-system request model extends briefly to networked scenarios, like HTTP protocols for inter-system communication.Web and network protocols
In web and network protocols, a request denotes a client-initiated message sent to a server to access or modify resources, forming the core of internet communication standards like the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). An HTTP request consists of a start line specifying the method (e.g., GET to retrieve a resource or POST to submit data), headers providing metadata such as the host and content type, and an optional message body for payloads like form data.[21] This structure enables clients, such as web browsers, to interact with servers in a standardized manner, ensuring interoperability across diverse systems.[21] The request-response model underpins HTTP's operation, wherein a client's request elicits a corresponding server response containing the resource, status information, or an error. This stateless, asynchronous pattern allows for efficient, scalable web interactions without maintaining session state on the server. Tim Berners-Lee first outlined this model in his 1989 proposal for an information management system at CERN, which envisioned a distributed hypertext environment where documents could be linked and requested globally, ultimately birthing the World Wide Web.[22] Typical HTTP requests target resources via Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), such as a GET request likeGET /index.html HTTP/1.1, which instructs the server to return the HTML content at that path. Servers reply with status codes to indicate outcomes, including 200 OK for successful fulfillment or 404 Not Found for unavailable resources, accompanied by response headers and body content.[21] These elements ensure clear feedback in the communication cycle, facilitating error handling and resource negotiation.
HTTP's evolution has refined request handling for performance and reliability. Version 1.0, introduced in 1996, supported basic requests over TCP but suffered from connection overhead per request.[23] Subsequent versions addressed this: HTTP/1.1 enabled persistent connections for multiple requests, while HTTP/3, standardized in 2022, leverages the QUIC transport protocol over UDP to multiplex requests, reduce latency through integrated encryption and congestion control, and improve resilience to network changes.[21][24]