I agree that it is unclear what they mean by “server side requests”. It is known that HTTP requests are sent by clients (browsers, bots, REST API users, etc.) and are ultimately received by servers. However, the word server can refer to different things in different contexts.
An HTTP request is accepted by an HTTP server such as Apache, Nginx, and Microsoft IIS. Servers provide a Server Programming Interface (SAPI) , which especially allows you to process information after processing by web servers.
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