what is the meaning of ?(question mark) in url string?

Question

can someone explain what is the difference between using
href=\"../usermanagement/search_user.jsp?\" and
href=\"../usermanagement/search_use

Answer 1

It is a query to pass paramters. ?pagename=navigation passes the value 'navigation' to the pagename parameter.

Answer 2

Whenever we want to pass some parameter to jsp then we simply append "?" question mark after jsp url and after that we mentioned parameter name and its value.

"../usermanagement/search_user.jsp?" means you did not get any parameter on this jsp.

"../usermanagement/search_user.jsp?pagename=navigation" with this url you can get the value of pagename parameter on jsp as by using this syntax:

String pagenNameValue=request.getParameter("pagename");

you will get "navigation" as pageNameValue parameter value.

Answer 3

The href="../usermanagement/search_user.jsp?pagename=navigation" is a GET Method and will pass a key : pagename with value : navigation via URL.

Whereas href="../usermanagement/search_user.jsp? is a POST method and doesn't pass information about its variables via URL.

check out Difference between GET and POST method

Answer 4

Its name is Query string. After the question mark you can pass key-value pairs and use them server-side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Query_string