Please ELI5 about POST / PUT / PATCH best practices

#webdev #help #discuss

It might be

POST - Create NEW record
PUT - If the record exists, update else, create a new record
PATCH - update
GET - read
DELETE - delete

But, do you really ever use PUT requests?

Also, we have to consider which can have req.body. To my understandings, GET and DELETE shouldn't have BODY, so mine becomes

GET - Simple query, like ?id={id}
POST - Complex query that needs req.body / file upload
PUT - Create NEW record
PATCH - Update
DELETE - Delete

Another thing to consider, IDEMPOTENCY. Do I have care about it?

HTTP  Idempotency
GET     yes
POST    no
PUT     yes
PATCH   no*
OPTIONS yes
HEAD    yes
DELETE  yes

Why can't we use POST for everything?

Also, don't forget that there are also HEAD and OPTIONS.

Top comments (7)

Brandin Chiu • Mar 11 '20

The official HTTP spec does not explicitly prohibit DELETE requests from having a body.

This is a fairly heated topic among some developers, and can be quite controversial from the conversations I've been apart of.

The major benefit of adhering to an official spec is not for us. It's for everyone else who may want to work with our interfaces/apis. It creates am expected action/result flow that makes the process cleaner.

PUT is still a valuable way to identify paths to update your resources, as POST should not be used to do this.

Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • Mar 11 '20

PUT is still a valuable way to identify paths to update your resources, as POST should not be used to do this.

Thanks.

Matthew Daly • Mar 11 '20

Why can't we use POST for everything?

Because going with the grain of HTTP means things like HTTP caching are more likely to work as expected. If your site is behind a caching proxy like Varnish, then using the correct HTTP methods means it's more likely to "just work" as expected because Varnish knows what each one does and can act accordingly. You can work around this by writing your own rules, but why do that if you don't have to?

Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • Mar 11 '20

Might be related -- blog.logrocket.com/graphql-vs-rest...

Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • Mar 11 '20

I should try varnish-cache.org/ someday, especially if I use AWS or DigitalOcean.

Matthew Daly • Mar 11 '20

You should also bear in mind that some users may be behind a proxy you don't control, such as if their employer uses a web proxy like Squid to reduce the bandwidth used.