RE: HTTP Methods

• From: Danny Ayers <danny666@virgilio.it>
• Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 21:36:14 +0100
• To: "Jon Hanna" <jon@hackcraft.net>, "Joe Gregorio" <joe@bitworking.org>
• Cc: <www-tag@w3.org>
• Message-ID: <BKELLDAGKABIOCHDFDBPCEEAFLAA.danny666@virgilio.it>

> > Am I being overly alarmist that we're slipping
> > into a two-methods-only-web, or is this a legitimate problem?
>
> A bit of both I think.

It's a legitimate concern when POST might be a developer's first choice (or
even *only* choice) when the required semantics are covered by DELETE or one
of the other methods. I think the 'blame' for the current bias towards GET
and POST largely lies with the current generation of browsers, and the view
of the web as read-only. But this approach to tooling can hardly be blamed,
as the expectation is heavily aided by HTML forms only including the GET and
POST methods.

I think it's historically interesting that in some areas the range of
methods is atrophying, while at the same time elsewhere it's being suggested
that the current range of methods needs to be significantly extended to
provide adequate handling of resources [1]. It's worth noting that the W3C
has influence in both directions - in the (X)HTML specs and the Semantic Web
initiative.

Cheers,
Danny.

[1] http://sw.nokia.com/uriqa/URIQA.html

Received on Tuesday, 24 February 2004 15:45:18 UTC