Recently in one of the Java web developer interview, one of my readers asked about the difference between x-www-form-url-encoded and multipart/form-data MIME types. In HTTP, there are two ways to send the HTML form data to the server either by using ContentType application/x-www-form-urlencoded or by using multipart/form-data. Even though both can be used to send both text and binary data to the server there is a subtle difference between them. In the case of x-www-form-urlencoded, the whole form data is sent as a long query string.