Re: <form method="GET|POST|PUT|DELETE" />

On 5/10/07, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de> wrote:
> Alan Dean wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > I would like to raise the question of <form> methods to the group.
> >
> > Currently, only GET and POST are specified as acceptable method
> > values: see http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#h-17.3
> >
> > I looked through the WHATWG document and could find no reference to
> > this issue, so I assume that there is no proposal for change at
> > present, see http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/
> >
> > Looking at the HTTP/1.1 specification, there is a core standard
> > specifying PUT and DELETE as well, see
> > http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec9.html
> >
> > Given the growing acceptance of REST I would like to propose that
> > these two methods are also incorporated into the html5 specification
> > so that browser-based REST UAs are not forced to implement clientside
> > XmlHttpRequest. This will permit a more graceful degradation of
> > RESTful applications in the face of disabled JavaScript.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REST
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rest-discuss/
> >
> > As these two methods are not currently supported in the existing html
> > specification, I can't see a backwards compatibility issue (although
> > others may know more than me in this regard).
> >
> > Consideration might also be made of supporting OPTIONS as well (to
> > facilitate RESTful service discovery).
> > ...
>
> I would prefer no special cases at all; thus any method name should be
> allowed.
>
> Best regards, Julian
>

Julian,

How would the browser know if the parameters should be sent to the
querystring (GET and DELETE) or encoded in the message body (POST and
PUT) if any value is allowed?

For example: what should the browser do with <form method="FOO" />?

Regards,
Alan Dean
http://thoughtpad.net/alan-dean

Received on Thursday, 10 May 2007 12:54:47 UTC