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HTTP request methods

HTTP defines a set of request methods to indicate the desired action to be performed for a given resource. Although they can also be nouns, these request methods are sometimes referred to as HTTP verbs. Each of them implements a different semantic, but some common features are shared by a group of them: e.g. a request method can be safe, idempotent, or cacheable.

HTTP request methods

HTTP defines a set of request methods to indicate the desired action to be performed for a given resource. Although they can also be nouns, these request methods are sometimes referred to as HTTP verbs. Each of them implements a different semantic, but some common features are shared by a group of them: e.g. a request method can be safe, idempotent, or cacheable.

GET

The GET method requests a representation of the specified resource. Requests using GET should only retrieve data.

HEAD

The HEAD method asks for a response identical to a GET request, but without the response body.

POST

The POST method submits an entity to the specified resource, often causing a change in state or side effects on the server.

PUT

The PUT method replaces all current representations of the target resource with the request payload.

DELETE

The DELETE method deletes the specified resource.

CONNECT

The CONNECT method establishes a tunnel to the server identified by the target resource.

OPTIONS

The OPTIONS method describes the communication options for the target resource.

TRACE

The TRACE method performs a message loop-back test along the path to the target resource.

PATCH

The PATCH method applies partial modifications to a resource.

Specifications

Specification HTTP Semantics # CONNECT HTTP Semantics # DELETE HTTP Semantics # GET HTTP Semantics # HEAD HTTP Semantics # OPTIONS HTTP Semantics # POST HTTP Semantics # PUT HTTP Semantics # TRACE

Browser compatibility

Report problems with this compatibility data on GitHub

desktop mobile Chrome Edge Firefox Opera Safari Chrome Android Firefox for Android Opera Android Safari on iOS Samsung Internet WebView Android CONNECT DELETE GET HEAD OPTIONS POST PUT TRACE

Legend

Tip: you can click/tap on a cell for more information.

Full support Full support

Compatibility unknown

Compatibility unknown

See also

HTTP headers

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स्रोत : developer.mozilla.org

9 HTTP methods and how to use them

HTTP protocol works by clients sending requests to the servers and servers responding to the requests. We do CRUD operations (Create, Read, Update, Delete) by sending HTTP requests with different HTTP methods, sometimes called HTTP verbs.

API testing

9 HTTP methods and how to use them

Masy | 01 Dec, 2021 | 11 Mins Read

HTTP protocol works by clients sending requests to the servers and servers responding to the requests. We do CRUD operations (Create, Read, Update, Delete) by sending HTTP requests with different HTTP methods, sometimes called HTTP verbs. GET and POST are the most frequently used HTTP methods, but more HTTP methods are to learn. This article will go through different HTTP methods and how to use them when building and using web APIs.

HTTP Request Structure

Using HTTP methods in Restful API development

9 HTTP methods you should know about

GET Method POST Method PUT Method PATCH Method DELETE Method HEAD Method OPTIONS Method TRACE Method CONNECT Method

Comparison of HTTP methods

Browser Support FAQ

HTTP Request Structure

Before jumping into various HTTP methods and how to use them when building or using APIs, let’s go through a standard HTTP request structure. In HTTP protocol, every request should have a URL (Uniform resource locators) or URI(Uniform Resource Identifier) address and a method. An HTTP client sends an HTTP request to a server in the form of a request message which includes the following format:

A request-line

Zero or more Header (General|Request|Entity) field followed by CRLF.

An empty line (a line with nothing before CRLF shows the end of the fields)

A message-body (optional)

Using HTTP methods in Restful API development

REST is the abbreviation of Representational State Transfer, and it is an architectural pattern for creating web services. Web services that use the REST principles are the RESTful web services. These web services are used by application developers widely because they simply communicate with other servers on different machines.

REST makes it easy to share data between clients and servers. REST applications use HTTP methods like GET, POST, DELETE, PUT, etc., to do CRUD operations.

What is a Safe HTTP method?

A safe method is a method that doesn’t change data on the server. For example, GET and HEAD are safe methods because the user or an application does not request side effects on the server when calling them.

What is an Idempotent method?

An Idempotent method means no matter how many times it runs; it always returns the same response. For example, The PUT and DELETE methods share this property. However, it is possible that a sequence of several requests is not idempotent even if all of the methods executed in that sequence are idempotent. So, a series of requests is idempotent if a single execution of the entire series always returns the same result.

9 HTTP methods you should know about

By now, you have a good understanding of how HTTP protocol works, different HTTP methods, and why we should use them. This section will cover each method in more depth, so without further ado, let’s get started with GET, the most popular HTTP method out there.

GET Method

If we want to retrieve data from a resource like websites, servers or APIs, we send them a GET Request. For example, we send a GET request to the server if we want a list of our customers or a specific customer.

Since the GET method should never change the data on the resources and just read them(read-only), it is considered a Safe Method. Additionally, the Get method is idempotent.

How to test an API with a GET method?

When we want to test an API, the most popular method that we would use is the GET method. Therefore, We expect the following to happen.

If the resource is accessible, the API returns the 200 Status Code, which means OK.

Along with the 200 Status Code, the server usually returns a response body in XML or JSON format. So, for example, we expect the [GET] /members endpoint to return a list of members in XML or JSON.

If the server does not support the endpoint, the server returns the 404 Status Code, which means Not Found.

If we send the request in the wrong syntax, the server returns the 400 Status Code, which means Bad Request.

POST Method

The POST method creates a new resource on the backend (server). The request body carries the data we want to the server. It is neither a safe nor idempotent method. We don’t expect to get the same result every time we send a POST request. For example, two identical POST requests will create two new equivalent resources with the same data and different resource ids.

When sending a POST request to a server, we expect the following to happen:

Ideally, if the POST request has created a new resource on the other side, the response should come with 201 Status Code which means Created.

Sometimes, performing a POST request doesn’t return a resource at the given URL; in this case, the method will return 204 status code which means No content.

How to test a POST endpoint

स्रोत : testfully.io

HTTP

HTTP Methods - The set of common methods for HTTP/1.1 is defined below and this set can be expanded based on requirements. These method names are case sensitive and they must be used in uppercase.

HTTP - Methods

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The set of common methods for HTTP/1.1 is defined below and this set can be expanded based on requirements. These method names are case sensitive and they must be used in uppercase.

S.N. Method and Description

1 GET

The GET method is used to retrieve information from the given server using a given URI. Requests using GET should only retrieve data and should have no other effect on the data.

2 HEAD

Same as GET, but transfers the status line and header section only.

3 POST

A POST request is used to send data to the server, for example, customer information, file upload, etc. using HTML forms.

4 PUT

Replaces all current representations of the target resource with the uploaded content.

5 DELETE

Removes all current representations of the target resource given by a URI.

6 CONNECT

Establishes a tunnel to the server identified by a given URI.

7 OPTIONS

Describes the communication options for the target resource.

8 TRACE

Performs a message loop-back test along the path to the target resource.

GET Method

A GET request retrieves data from a web server by specifying parameters in the URL portion of the request. This is the main method used for document retrieval. The following example makes use of GET method to fetch hello.htm:

GET /hello.htm HTTP/1.1

User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE5.01; Windows NT)

Host: www.tutorialspoint.com

Accept-Language: en-us

Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate

Connection: Keep-Alive

The server response against the above GET request will be as follows:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:28:53 GMT

Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Win32)

Last-Modified: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:15:56 GMT

ETag: "34aa387-d-1568eb00"

Vary: Authorization,Accept

Accept-Ranges: bytes

Content-Length: 88

Content-Type: text/html

Connection: Closed

Hello, World!

Hello, World! HEAD Method

The HEAD method is functionally similar to GET, except that the server replies with a response line and headers, but no entity-body. The following example makes use of HEAD method to fetch header information about hello.htm:

HEAD /hello.htm HTTP/1.1

User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE5.01; Windows NT)

Host: www.tutorialspoint.com

Accept-Language: en-us

Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate

Connection: Keep-Alive

The server response against the above HEAD request will be as follows:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:28:53 GMT

Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Win32)

Last-Modified: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:15:56 GMT

ETag: "34aa387-d-1568eb00"

Vary: Authorization,Accept

Accept-Ranges: bytes

Content-Length: 88

Content-Type: text/html

Connection: Closed

You can notice that here server the does not send any data after header.

POST Method

The POST method is used when you want to send some data to the server, for example, file update, form data, etc. The following example makes use of POST method to send a form data to the server, which will be processed by a process.cgi and finally a response will be returned:

POST /cgi-bin/process.cgi HTTP/1.1

User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE5.01; Windows NT)

Host: www.tutorialspoint.com

Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8

Content-Length: 88

Accept-Language: en-us

Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate

Connection: Keep-Alive

The server side script process.cgi processes the passed data and sends the following response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:28:53 GMT

Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Win32)

Last-Modified: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:15:56 GMT

ETag: "34aa387-d-1568eb00"

Vary: Authorization,Accept

Accept-Ranges: bytes

Content-Length: 88

Content-Type: text/html

Connection: Closed

Request Processed Successfully

Request Processed Successfully PUT Method

The PUT method is used to request the server to store the included entity-body at a location specified by the given URL. The following example requests the server to save the given entity-body in hello.htm at the root of the server:

PUT /hello.htm HTTP/1.1

User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE5.01; Windows NT)

Host: www.tutorialspoint.com

Accept-Language: en-us

Connection: Keep-Alive

Content-type: text/html

Content-Length: 182

Hello, World!

The server will store the given entity-body in hello.htm file and will send the following response back to the client:

HTTP/1.1 201 Created

Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:28:53 GMT

Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Win32)

Content-type: text/html

Content-length: 30 Connection: Closed

The file was created.

The file was created. DELETE Method

The DELETE method is used to request the server to delete a file at a location specified by the given URL. The following example requests the server to delete the given file hello.htm at the root of the server:

DELETE /hello.htm HTTP/1.1

स्रोत : www.tutorialspoint.com