requestspecific

Requestspecific is a concept in software engineering that describes data, decisions, or behavior that apply to a single request within a distributed system. It refers to tailoring how a request is processed and what data is returned based on characteristics of the request, such as headers, query parameters, user identity, locale, or other contextual signals. In practice, requestspecific handling can influence routing, authentication, validation, content negotiation, and caching, among other aspects.

Applications include REST or GraphQL APIs that vary responses by Accept-Language, user role, or device type; per-request cache keys; localized content generation; and per-request tracing or auditing. Implementation approaches include using HTTP headers, query parameters, cookies, or in-code context objects; middleware that propagates per-request data; or request-scoped services in dependency injection systems.

Benefits of the approach include improved relevance of responses, reduced data transfer, and better alignment with user or client intent. It can also enable more efficient caching and monitoring by distinguishing requests at a finer granularity. However, this model can introduce design and maintenance complexity, complicate caching strategies, and raise privacy or security considerations if sensitive context is propagated or logged.

See also: per-request scope, content negotiation, context propagation, request context. Note that the term is sometimes written as request-specific; in this article, requestspecific is used to describe the concept.