On 30.03.2011 16:58, Cameron Heavon-Jones wrote:
On 30/03/2011, at 3:25 PM, Julian Reschke wrote:
On 30.03.2011 16:02, Cameron Heavon-Jones wrote:
Existing servers don't do this for PUT or DELETE but then existing servers
don't currently support these methods from forms anyway.
What exactly does it *mean* to support these methods "for forms"?
It is so that a user can interact with a resful service using plain html (no
ajax) in the same way that automated agents can.
This means a user must be able to initiate any method of HTTP request, and the
only way of doing that in html is through a form. That forms only support GET
and POST just precludes real humans from interacting with restful systems.
That PUT and DELETE are idempotent doesn't mean that forms can't send them, it
just means that the service methods must be designed as such. This is the way
that this currently works for automated agents, there is nothing special about
a user agent which precludes it from sending these types of requests. A form is
just a UI element for allowing a user to interact with the same service which
everything else already does.
For a form to send a DELETE doesn't seem to make much sense, but this is only
due to the flexibility of the form element in being able to capture any amount
of request data. This data seems at odds with a method like DELETE which
appears to be a non-configurable operation. However, it does make sense that
for an idempotent operation there almost should be some some additional
arguments - maybe even just a hidden version number.
...
So for PUT, where do you want the form fields to go? URI? request body?
Best regards, Julian
