On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 4:22 AM, David Bordoley <[email protected]> wrote:
> Really the difference between POST and GET is idempotence. GET operations > must be idempotent, not having side effects, while POST operations may have > side effects as defined by the server. A good rule of thumb is that if a > request returns data but doesn't change the state of the server, than GET > should be used as it allows for sane client/intermediary caching. > I agree with that last sentence, but not the first two. Idempotence in this context means that repeated identical requests are equivalent to a single request, not that the request doesn't potentially change state. For example, PUT is typically idempotent, because storing the same new state multiple times in succession is equivalent to storing it once. I think you wanted to say that the difference between GET and POST is mutativity. GET should be non-mutative -- which makes it idempotent, but only trivially -- but POST can be mutative. --tim ------------------------------------------------------ http://restlet.tigris.org/ds/viewMessage.do?dsForumId=4447&dsMessageId=2394649
