Hands-On Software Engineering with Python

Handling requests and generating responses

Most services will follow some sort of a request-response process model. A request is received, whether from a human user interacting with the service or some other process; the service then reads the request, determines what to do with it, performs whatever actions are needed, and generates and returns a response.

There are at least three distinct request types that are common enough to warrant a detailed examination – filesystem, HTTP/web message, and queue-based – each with its own baseline assumptions about how requests will be presented to a service, and each with its own resultant implications for design and execution.

The responses generated for any given request type usually imply a ...