Re: safe reload POST?

Roy T. Fielding:
>
>Pressing "Reload" on a browser means "perform an unconditional GET
>on this resource."  Any browser that performs an action other than GET
>as a result of the Reload button being pressed is seriously broken.

No. There is no standard which defines the semantics of the reload
button.  You can't accuse any browser of being seriously broken if
it does a POST, not a GET.

There is not even an ad-hoc standard.  When reload is pressed on a
POST result, some browsers do a GET on the POST URI, some do the POST
again, and some pop up a dialog box.  

A standard for this has been on my wish list since 1994, but nothing
has happened so far.  Larry's proposal looks like a very good first
step to me.

This has nothing to do with the safety (or idempotence as it was
called) of GET, and has little to do with caching.  This is about
resubmitting potentially unsafe requests due to the pressing of the
reload button or due to navigating back in the history list.

> ...Roy T. Fielding

Koen.

Received on Thursday, 26 September 1996 05:39:36 UTC