Re: POST with empty body

It's important to note that a message without a body can still carry a representation, because a representation is the combination of the body (which can be zero-length) *and* headers.

See:
  http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-11#section-4

Cheers,


On 02/09/2010, at 10:31 AM, Darrel Miller wrote:

> In the description of POST here [1], it starts with:
> 
> "The POST method is used to request that the origin server accept the
> representation enclosed in the request as data to be processed by the
> target resource."
> 
> This seems to infer that it is expected that a POST include a body.  Is it
> required to have a body?  Is it unreasonable to expect a client to issue 
> 
> POST http://example.org/tokens
> 
> ...and expect a token to be created, despite the fact that no representation
> is passed to the origin server?
> 
> Taking this a step further, is the use of query string parameters instead of
> a post body considered a valid request.  Could a client make the following
> request?
> 
> POST http://mapservice.org/Waypoints?latitude=51&longiitude=114
> 
> I realize this is not a common usage, but my question is whether this is
> prohibited by the HTTP specification, whether it is discouraged due to
> negative impacts, or whether it a reasonable usage that is just not clear
> from the description of POST.
> 
> Thanks for your time,
> 
> Darrel Miller
> 
> [1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p2-semantics-11#page-17
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 


--
Mark Nottingham     http://www.mnot.net/

Received on Friday, 3 September 2010 01:00:41 UTC