What is the usefulness of PUT and DELETE HTTP request methods

Question

I have read a lot stuff about this but not able to get the conclusion on this topic    But I ve never used PUT or DELETE HTTP Request methods  My tendency is to use GET when stat of the system my application or website   may not be affected  like product listing  and to use POST when it is affected order placed   Isn t it sufficient or am I missing something

User · Answer

Although I take the risk of not being popular I say they are not useful nowadays.

I think they were well intended and useful in the past when for example DELETE told the server to delete the resource found at supplied URL and PUT (with its sibling PATCH) told the server to do update in an idempotent manner.

Things evolved and URLs became virtual (see url rewriting for example) making resources lose their initial meaning of real folder/subforder/file and so, CRUD action verbs covered by HTTP protocol methods (GET, POST, PUT/PATCH, DELETE) lost track.

Let's take an example:

/api/entity/list/{id} vs GET /api/entity/{id}
/api/entity/add/{id} vs POST /api/entity
/api/entity/edit/{id} vs PUT /api/entity/{id}
/api/entity/delete/{id} vs DELETE /api/entity/{id}

On the left side is not written the HTTP method, essentially it doesn't matter (POST and GET are enough) and on the right side appropriate HTTP methods are used.

Right side looks elegant, clean and professional. Imagine now you have to maintain a code that's been using the elegant API and you have to search where deletion call is done. You'll search for "api/entity" and among results you'll have to see which one is doing DELETE. Or even worse, you have a junior programmer which by mistake switched PUT with DELETE and as URL is the same shit happened.

In my opinion putting the action verb in the URL has advantages over using the appropriate HTTP method for that action even if it's not so elegant. If you want to see where delete call is made you just have to search for "api/entity/delete" and you'll find it straight away.

Building an API without the whole HTTP array of methods makes it easier to be consumed and maintained afterwards

User · Answer

Using HTTP Request verb such as GET  POST  DELETE  PUT etc    enables you to build RESTful web applications  Read about it here  http   en wikipedia org wiki Representational state transfer  The easiest way to see benefits from this is to look at this example  Every MVC framework has a Router Dispatcher that maps URL-s to actionControllers  So URL like this   blog article 1 would invoke blogController  articleAction  id   Now this Router is only aware of the URL or  blog article 1   But if that Router would be aware of whole HTTP Request object instead of just URL  he could have access HTTP Request verb  GET  POST  PUT  DELETE      and many other useful stuff about current HTTP Request   That would enable you to configure application so it can accept the same URL and map it to different actionControllers depending on the HTTP Request verb   For example   if you want to retrive article 1 you can do this   GET  blog article 1 HTTP 1 1   but if you want to delete article 1 you will do this   DELETE  blog article 1 HTTP 1 1   Notice that both HTTP Requests have the same URI   blog article 1  the only difference is the HTTP Request verb  And based on that verb your router can call different actionController  This enables you to build neat URL-s   Read this two articles  they might help you   Symfony 2 - HTTP Fundamentals  Symfony 2 - Routing  These articles are about Symfony 2 framework  but they can help you to figure out how does HTTP Requests and Responses work   Hope this helps

User · Answer

DELETE is for deleting the request resource      The DELETE method requests that the origin server delete the resource identified by the Request-URI  This method MAY be overridden by human intervention  or other means  on the origin server  The client cannot be guaranteed that the operation has been carried out  even if the status code returned from the origin server indicates that the action has been completed successfully       PUT is for putting or updating a resource on the server      The PUT method requests that the enclosed entity be stored under the supplied Request-URI  If the Request-URI refers to an already existing resource  the enclosed entity SHOULD be considered as a modified version of the one residing on the origin server  If the Request-URI does not point to an existing resource  and that URI is capable of being defined as a new resource by the requesting user agent  the origin server can create the resource with that URI       For the full specification visit    http   www w3 org Protocols rfc2616 rfc2616-sec9 html   Since current browsers unfortunately do not support any other verbs than POST and GET in HTML forms  you usually cannot utilize HTTP to it s full extent with them  you can still hijack their submission via JavaScript though   The absence of support for these methods in HTML forms led to URIs containing verbs  like for instance   POST http   example com order 1 delete   or even worse  POST http   example com deleteOrder id 1   effectively tunneling CRUD semantics over HTTP  But verbs were never meant to be part of the URI  Instead HTTP already provides the mechanism and semantics to CRUD a Resource  e g  an order  through the HTTP methods  HTTP is a protocol and not just some data tunneling service   So to delete a Resource on the webserver  you d call   DELETE http   example com order 1   and to update it you d call  PUT http   example com order 1   and provide the updated Resource Representation in the PUT body for the webserver to apply then   So  if you are building some sort of client for a REST API  you will likely make it send PUT and DELETE requests  This could be a client built inside a browser  e g  sending requests via JavaScript or it could be some tool running on a server  etc   For some more details visit    http   martinfowler com articles richardsonMaturityModel html Are the PUT  DELETE  HEAD  etc methods available in most web browsers  Why are there no PUT and DELETE methods in HTML forms Should PUT and DELETE be used in forms  http   amundsen com examples put-delete-forms  http   www quora com HTTP Why-are-PUT-and-DELETE-no-longer-supported-in-HTML5-forms

User · Answer

Safe Methods   Get Resource No modification in resource  Idempotent     No change in resource status if requested many times Unsafe Methods   Create or Update Resource Modification in resource Non-Idempotent    Change in resource status if requested many times  According to your requirement    1  For safe and idempotent operation  Fetch Resource  use --------- GET METHOD 2  For unsafe and non-idempotent operation  Insert Resource  use--------- POST METHOD 3  For unsafe and idempotent operation  Update Resource  use--------- PUT METHOD 3  For unsafe and idempotent operation  Delete Resource  use--------- DELETE METHOD

[http] What is the usefulness of PUT and DELETE HTTP request methods?

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