Can I change the headers of the HTTP request sent by the browser

Question

I m looking into a restful design and would like to use the HTTP methods  POST  GET       and HTTP headers as much as possible  I already found out that the HTTP methods PUT and DELETE are not supported from the browser   Now I m looking to get different representations of the same resource and would like to do this by changing the Accept header of the request  Depending on this Accept header  the server can serve a different view on the same resource   Problem is that I didn t find a way to tell my browser to change this header    The  lt a   gt  tag has a type attribute  that can have a mime type  looked like a good candidate but the header was still the browser default  in Firefox it can be changed in about config with the network http accept default key

User · Answer

ModHeader extension for Google Chrome  is also a good option  You can just set the Headers you want and just enter the URL in the browser  it will automatically take the headers from the extension when you hit the url  Only thing is  it will send headers for each and every URL you will hit so you have to disable or delete it after use

User · Answer

I would partially disagree with Milan s suggestion of embedding the requested representation in the URI   If anyhow possible  URIs should only be used for addressing resources and not for tunneling HTTP methods verbs  Eventually  specific business action  edit  lock  etc   could be embedded in the URI if create  POST  or update  PUT  alone do not serve the purpose    POST http   shonzilla com orders 08 165 edit   In the case of requesting a particular representation in URI you would need to disrupt your URI design eventually making it uglier  mixing two distinct REST concepts in the same place  i e  URI  and making it harder to generically process requests on the server-side  What Milan is suggesting and many are doing the same  incl  Flickr  is exactly this   Instead  a more RESTful approach would be using a separate place to encode preferred representation by using Accept HTTP header which is used for content negotiation where client tells to the server which content types it can handle process and server tries to fulfill client s request  This approach is a part of HTTP 1 1 standard  software compliant and supported by web browsers as well   Compare this    GET  orders 08 165 xml HTTP 1 1 or GET  orders 08 165 format xml HTTP 1 1   to this    GET  orders 08 165 HTTP 1 1 Accept  application xml   From a web browser you can request any content type by using setRequestHeader method of XMLHttpRequest object  For example    function getOrder year  yearlyOrderId  contentType     var client   new XMLHttpRequest     client open  GET     order     year         yearlyOrderId    client setRequestHeader  Accept   contentType    client send orderDetails       To sum it up  the address  i e  the URI of a resource should be independent of its representation and XMLHttpRequest setRequestHeader method allows you to request any representation using the Accept HTTP header   Cheers  Shonzilla

User · Answer

I don t think it s possible to do it in the way you are trying to do it   Indication of the accepted data format is usually done through adding the extension to the resource name  So  if you have resource like   resources resource   and GET  resources resource returns its HTML representation  to indicate that you want its XML representation instead  you can use following pattern    resources resource xml   You have to do the accepted content type determination magic on the server side  then   Or use Javascript as James suggests

User · Answer

Use some javascript    xmlhttp new XMLHttpRequest    xmlhttp open  PUT  http   www mydomain org documents standards browsers supportlist  xmlhttp send  page content goes here

User · Answer

I would partially disagree with Milan s suggestion of embedding the requested representation in the URI   If anyhow possible  URIs should only be used for addressing resources and not for tunneling HTTP methods verbs  Eventually  specific business action  edit  lock  etc   could be embedded in the URI if create  POST  or update  PUT  alone do not serve the purpose    POST http   shonzilla com orders 08 165 edit   In the case of requesting a particular representation in URI you would need to disrupt your URI design eventually making it uglier  mixing two distinct REST concepts in the same place  i e  URI  and making it harder to generically process requests on the server-side  What Milan is suggesting and many are doing the same  incl  Flickr  is exactly this   Instead  a more RESTful approach would be using a separate place to encode preferred representation by using Accept HTTP header which is used for content negotiation where client tells to the server which content types it can handle process and server tries to fulfill client s request  This approach is a part of HTTP 1 1 standard  software compliant and supported by web browsers as well   Compare this    GET  orders 08 165 xml HTTP 1 1 or GET  orders 08 165 format xml HTTP 1 1   to this    GET  orders 08 165 HTTP 1 1 Accept  application xml   From a web browser you can request any content type by using setRequestHeader method of XMLHttpRequest object  For example    function getOrder year  yearlyOrderId  contentType     var client   new XMLHttpRequest     client open  GET     order     year         yearlyOrderId    client setRequestHeader  Accept   contentType    client send orderDetails       To sum it up  the address  i e  the URI of a resource should be independent of its representation and XMLHttpRequest setRequestHeader method allows you to request any representation using the Accept HTTP header   Cheers  Shonzilla

User · Answer

I would partially disagree with Milan s suggestion of embedding the requested representation in the URI   If anyhow possible  URIs should only be used for addressing resources and not for tunneling HTTP methods verbs  Eventually  specific business action  edit  lock  etc   could be embedded in the URI if create  POST  or update  PUT  alone do not serve the purpose    POST http   shonzilla com orders 08 165 edit   In the case of requesting a particular representation in URI you would need to disrupt your URI design eventually making it uglier  mixing two distinct REST concepts in the same place  i e  URI  and making it harder to generically process requests on the server-side  What Milan is suggesting and many are doing the same  incl  Flickr  is exactly this   Instead  a more RESTful approach would be using a separate place to encode preferred representation by using Accept HTTP header which is used for content negotiation where client tells to the server which content types it can handle process and server tries to fulfill client s request  This approach is a part of HTTP 1 1 standard  software compliant and supported by web browsers as well   Compare this    GET  orders 08 165 xml HTTP 1 1 or GET  orders 08 165 format xml HTTP 1 1   to this    GET  orders 08 165 HTTP 1 1 Accept  application xml   From a web browser you can request any content type by using setRequestHeader method of XMLHttpRequest object  For example    function getOrder year  yearlyOrderId  contentType     var client   new XMLHttpRequest     client open  GET     order     year         yearlyOrderId    client setRequestHeader  Accept   contentType    client send orderDetails       To sum it up  the address  i e  the URI of a resource should be independent of its representation and XMLHttpRequest setRequestHeader method allows you to request any representation using the Accept HTTP header   Cheers  Shonzilla

User · Answer

I don t think it s possible to do it in the way you are trying to do it   Indication of the accepted data format is usually done through adding the extension to the resource name  So  if you have resource like   resources resource   and GET  resources resource returns its HTML representation  to indicate that you want its XML representation instead  you can use following pattern    resources resource xml   You have to do the accepted content type determination magic on the server side  then   Or use Javascript as James suggests

User · Answer

I was looking to do exactly the same thing  RESTful web service   and I stumbled upon this firefox addon  which lets you modify the accept headers  actually  any request headers  for requests  It works perfectly   https   addons mozilla org en-US firefox addon 967

User · Answer

ModHeader extension for Google Chrome  is also a good option  You can just set the Headers you want and just enter the URL in the browser  it will automatically take the headers from the extension when you hit the url  Only thing is  it will send headers for each and every URL you will hit so you have to disable or delete it after use

User · Answer

Use some javascript    xmlhttp new XMLHttpRequest    xmlhttp open  PUT  http   www mydomain org documents standards browsers supportlist  xmlhttp send  page content goes here

User · Answer

I would partially disagree with Milan s suggestion of embedding the requested representation in the URI   If anyhow possible  URIs should only be used for addressing resources and not for tunneling HTTP methods verbs  Eventually  specific business action  edit  lock  etc   could be embedded in the URI if create  POST  or update  PUT  alone do not serve the purpose    POST http   shonzilla com orders 08 165 edit   In the case of requesting a particular representation in URI you would need to disrupt your URI design eventually making it uglier  mixing two distinct REST concepts in the same place  i e  URI  and making it harder to generically process requests on the server-side  What Milan is suggesting and many are doing the same  incl  Flickr  is exactly this   Instead  a more RESTful approach would be using a separate place to encode preferred representation by using Accept HTTP header which is used for content negotiation where client tells to the server which content types it can handle process and server tries to fulfill client s request  This approach is a part of HTTP 1 1 standard  software compliant and supported by web browsers as well   Compare this    GET  orders 08 165 xml HTTP 1 1 or GET  orders 08 165 format xml HTTP 1 1   to this    GET  orders 08 165 HTTP 1 1 Accept  application xml   From a web browser you can request any content type by using setRequestHeader method of XMLHttpRequest object  For example    function getOrder year  yearlyOrderId  contentType     var client   new XMLHttpRequest     client open  GET     order     year         yearlyOrderId    client setRequestHeader  Accept   contentType    client send orderDetails       To sum it up  the address  i e  the URI of a resource should be independent of its representation and XMLHttpRequest setRequestHeader method allows you to request any representation using the Accept HTTP header   Cheers  Shonzilla

User · Answer

I don t think it s possible to do it in the way you are trying to do it   Indication of the accepted data format is usually done through adding the extension to the resource name  So  if you have resource like   resources resource   and GET  resources resource returns its HTML representation  to indicate that you want its XML representation instead  you can use following pattern    resources resource xml   You have to do the accepted content type determination magic on the server side  then   Or use Javascript as James suggests

User · Answer

Use some javascript    xmlhttp new XMLHttpRequest    xmlhttp open  PUT  http   www mydomain org documents standards browsers supportlist  xmlhttp send  page content goes here

User · Answer

I was looking to do exactly the same thing  RESTful web service   and I stumbled upon this firefox addon  which lets you modify the accept headers  actually  any request headers  for requests  It works perfectly   https   addons mozilla org en-US firefox addon 967

User · Answer

Use some javascript    xmlhttp new XMLHttpRequest    xmlhttp open  PUT  http   www mydomain org documents standards browsers supportlist  xmlhttp send  page content goes here

User · Answer

I don t think it s possible to do it in the way you are trying to do it   Indication of the accepted data format is usually done through adding the extension to the resource name  So  if you have resource like   resources resource   and GET  resources resource returns its HTML representation  to indicate that you want its XML representation instead  you can use following pattern    resources resource xml   You have to do the accepted content type determination magic on the server side  then   Or use Javascript as James suggests

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