5 ms·

POST is effectively the catch-all verb. There's nothing that violates HTTP spec in having a site that only has one endpoint, `POST /`, that specifies the actual

by lwf 7y ago

POST is effectively the catch-all verb. There's nothing that violates HTTP spec in having a site that only has one endpoint, `POST /`, that specifies the actual JTBD somewhere in the request body. It's simply nasty and unidomatic. c.f. https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec9.html https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec9.html User agents still don't support PUT et all in forms without JavaScript -- you're limited to GET/POST, c.f. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/form#attr-method https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/fo...

chrisseaton 7y ago
> User agents still don't support PUT et all in forms without JavaScript So why were they in the original HTTP spec if they weren't supported by original HTTP agents?
- detaro 7y ago
  They were only added in HTTP 1.1, and it's initial drafts had even more variants that were clearly for file management: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-00#section-5.1.1 https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-00#sect... This is before me being old enough to follow technology, so below is a good portion of conjecture and hearsay (I'd love to be corrected by someone who actually remembers it): Tim Berners-Lee initial web browser was intended as an editing tool as well as a viewer, and these ideas came back when they went to write up HTTP as a a "proper" IETF standard. Not uncommon (bit less so today, but back then especially) to design specs with what they thought it should do, not what they'd tried/done in practice. Making an official spec is the chance to get this stuff in. At some point, a bunch of the file-specific stuff was split off to WebDAV as an extra thing (work on that started 1996, HTTP 1.1 was finished 1997) - or rejected and WebDAV created as a new home for those ideas? But PUT among some others survived.
- thephyber 7y ago
  > So why were they in the original HTTP spec if they weren't supported by original HTTP agents? Bad assumption.[1] HTTP/1.0 spec (1996) defined GET, POST, and HEAD.[2] HTTP/1.1 spec (1997) defined all of the other, newer methods.[3] > supported by original HTTP agents The first web browsers I know about were Mosaic (1993) and Netscape Navigator (1994) predating the HTTP/1.0 RFC. [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41411152/how-many-http-verbs-are-there https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41411152/how-many-http-v... [2] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1945#section-5.1.1 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1945#section-5.1.1 [3] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2068#section-9 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2068#section-9
  - yxhuvud 7y ago
    What I still don't understand is why they didn't add support for them to forms.

by lwf 7y ago

chrisseaton 7y ago

> User agents still don't support PUT et all in forms without JavaScript So why were they in the original HTTP spec if they weren't supported by original HTTP agents?

detaro 7y ago
They were only added in HTTP 1.1, and it's initial drafts had even more variants that were clearly for file management: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-00#section-5.1.1 https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-00#sect... This is before me being old enough to follow technology, so below is a good portion of conjecture and hearsay (I'd love to be corrected by someone who actually remembers it): Tim Berners-Lee initial web browser was intended as an editing tool as well as a viewer, and these ideas came back when they went to write up HTTP as a a "proper" IETF standard. Not uncommon (bit less so today, but back then especially) to design specs with what they thought it should do, not what they'd tried/done in practice. Making an official spec is the chance to get this stuff in. At some point, a bunch of the file-specific stuff was split off to WebDAV as an extra thing (work on that started 1996, HTTP 1.1 was finished 1997) - or rejected and WebDAV created as a new home for those ideas? But PUT among some others survived.
thephyber 7y ago
> So why were they in the original HTTP spec if they weren't supported by original HTTP agents? Bad assumption.[1] HTTP/1.0 spec (1996) defined GET, POST, and HEAD.[2] HTTP/1.1 spec (1997) defined all of the other, newer methods.[3] > supported by original HTTP agents The first web browsers I know about were Mosaic (1993) and Netscape Navigator (1994) predating the HTTP/1.0 RFC. [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41411152/how-many-http-verbs-are-there https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41411152/how-many-http-v... [2] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1945#section-5.1.1 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1945#section-5.1.1 [3] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2068#section-9 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2068#section-9
- yxhuvud 7y ago
  What I still don't understand is why they didn't add support for them to forms.