Servlet Attributes and Parameters

Answer:
Client requests are passed on to a servlet through the Web server's servlet engine. The servlet engine packages the request into a ServletRequest object, through which request attributes and parameters can be extracted.

The HttpServlet class examines the request and repackages it as an HttpServletRequest before dispatching it to one of its "do" methods, such as doGet. Attributes provide a means for the Web server to give a servlet extra information about a request. They do not represent data that was sent directly from the client.

Parameters are akin to function arguments. They are name value pairs transmitted by the client and interpreted by the servlet.

For example, the values submitted through an HTML form would be passed as parameters that could be accessed through the HttpServletRequest argument to doGet.