What's the meaning of "serve" here?

Anybody can tell me what the meaning of “serve” here is, or can you recommend some high-quality courses that explain the principle of servers or something that works in the background. The challenge is not so hard for a newbie as we can find the potential rules according to the context, but it is hard for me to understand why it works like this. I want to know more about this as I’m totally fresh to web development, thanks!

Your project link(s)

solution: boilerplate-express-1 - Replit

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Challenge: Serve JSON on a Specific Route

Link to the challenge:

Some quick and dirty links… There’s tons of info on that topic on the web…

Client-Server Model

When people refer to servers, they could mean the physical machine the server software is running on or the software (eg Apache Server, which serves web content)

In the context of that lesson “serve” means exactly that. You go to a restuarant and order a meal. The “server” (waitperson) then “serves” you that meal.

You are the patron or the “client”.

A computer or software that connects to a server to use resources it provides is referred to as the “client”.

Same concept in computing as in a restaurant analogy.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be a fancy robust computer in a data center somewhere. You could install some server software on your laptop and connect to that via another laptop. The laptop with the server software is the “server” in that context and the laptop connecting to it is the “client”.

You will sometimes here the phrase “agent” or “server agent” and “client agent”… basically means the same thing, but is usually referring to the software, or services running on the machine and not the physical machine.

What is a Service

The API (Application Programming Interface) is a way that developers of a server or service create a way for other 3rd party programmers to use and interact with the server without knowing the implementation details of that software.

A basic and generic example of that:

If you wanted to write a mobile app on Android, you’d use the Android SDK and Android Studio IDE. There are methods and functions you’d use to write it which is all specified in the API. But you don’t need to know all the internal design and implementation details of the Android OS, you just use the API provided by Google to interface with the OS.

Application Programming Interface (API)

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Also, I don’t know if you are aware, but fCC has way more than just the challenges/projects… check out the fCC youtube channel… some good vids on there…

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