- From: Nathan <nathan@webr3.org>
- Date: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:38:42 +0100
- To: Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>
- CC: Darrel Miller <darrel@tavis.ca>, ietf-http-wg@w3.org
Is there any chance of a slight clarification to zero-body POST, message in URI? Specifically I'm thinking that for years the message of don't do things like 'GET /transfer-funds?account=1234&to=4567&amount=100000000' has been common, whereas this seems to indicate that simply swapping the verb to POST makes it 'okay' (please do infer the human readable meaning of the example conveyed by the URI). I guess (personally) I have a gut feeling that this could create problems somewhere down the line - but the specifics of how and what escape me for the time being. Best, Nathan Mark Nottingham wrote: > 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 12:39:55 UTC