Hands-On Software Engineering with Python

HTTP- or web-based

HTTP-based services (web services), as the name implies, use the HTTP protocol to receive requests and transmit responses to those requests. As a subset of network-aware services, web services allow access to the service from machines other than the one that the service is actually running on. Web services don't have to be accessible on the public internet; they can live entirely in a local network, and operate just as well inside of those boundaries. They do, however, have to conform to some basic minimum standards, and could benefit from adhering to others.

It is likely that the most important of those standards is adhering to the request methods of the HTTP protocol. The methods that are most commonly seen in websites, ...