XML wasn’t yet a web standard in 1990–1994, but the early Web’s HTTP interfaces, CGI scripts, and MIME content types created the exact need XML later filled: predictable, self-describing data that could move cleanly between systems.
In the Web’s earliest years, HTTP’s stateless design collided with real application needs: logins, carts, personalization, and workflow. This chapter traces how developers improvised sessions and how cookies began to emerge around 1994.
From HTTP/0.9 and early URLs to HTML forms and MIME types, 1990–1994 quietly created the web’s first practical API surface—long before JavaScript existed.
Before JSON, before REST, and before public developer portals, HTML forms quietly created the first mainstream user-to-server API pattern on the early Web—turning clicks into structured HTTP requests.
Before REST and JSON, CGI scripts turned early websites into programmable interfaces. From 1990–1994, CGI and server-side integration quietly shaped the first usable patterns of web APIs.
Before “web APIs” had a name, early HTTP and the newborn World Wide Web (1990–1994) established the core patterns APIs still use: resources, stateless requests, URIs, and a simple request/response contract.
Between 1990 and 1994, CGI scripts turned the early Web from static documents into interactive services. This chapter explains how the first practical HTTP interfaces worked—requests as inputs, script output as responses—and how that pattern became the backbone of modern web APIs.
Chapter 1 (1990–1994) of web API history: how early HTTP turned the newborn Web into a programmable interface—long before “REST” and “JSON” became everyday terms.