title: How does one specify the HTTP Request Method in the URL?
body: <p>I've just begun learning about Java Servlets, and in the process, I've had to go through the basics of how HTTP works. This had led me to some confusion. </p>
  
  <p>I understand that methods like <code>doGet()</code> and <code>doPost()</code> are meant to respond to different kinds of HTTP Request Methods. There's a simple Tomcat project one of my senior colleagues has written that I'm using to understand how things work. In it, there's a JSP file with the following tag in it:</p>
  
  <p><code>&lt;form action="dummyClass" method="post"&gt;</code></p>
  
  <p>So, I get how this specifies the HTTP Request Method to the Servlet from the HTML page. The user submits the form and the Servlet executes it's <code>doPost()</code> method.</p>
  
  <p>But I can't understand how this would generalize to other kinds of resources on the server. I mean, HTTP is a general protocol for the web...it isn't specific to JSP. So how does typing a URL like <code>http://www.nowhere123.com/docs/index.html</code> into a browser specify to the server what HTTP Request Method I want to send it?</p>