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Reputation: 4807

What are restfull web service method types means?

I am not that new to web service but I am not able to understand use of http methods type in restful web service.

I was referring to vogella tutorial here

http://www.vogella.com/tutorials/REST/article.html#rest_httpmethods

They have following description that I am not able to understand somewhat

(This is fine. No query here)

(Ok seems logical, but it must be idempotent why should I care about it? I am not going to call again this service with same data.)

(Ok same question again why do I want to repeat delete query once it is already deleted?)

(This is fine)

I can do delete and putting data with get and post method also, I know I am not able to understand, but why should I use extra method type delete and put, that are provided in web services and what is exactly use for that ?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 349

Answers (2)

Paul Samsotha
Paul Samsotha

Reputation: 209012

The most widely used and "known" HTTP methods are GET and POST. But there are other methods, each of which have different semantics. We need to choose the method which has te most proper meaning to the operation the request is meant to perform, and should not "dumb down" the semantics for those only familiar with GET and POST.

DELETE. The semantics are as follows. Once a DELETE request has been processed for a given resource, that resource can no longer be accessed be clients, no ifs, ands, or buts. Any future request to try and retrieve this resource state's representation with GET or HEAD should result in a 404.

That being said, if the semantics of the operation fit the above description, we must use DELETE. Anything less, such as a "soft" delete or some other state-changing interaction, should not be done with a DELETE, better with POST. So it comes down to the semantics, why to use DELETE.

As far as the question "why do I want to repeat delete query once it is already deleted?", well we don't, but if we were to try to use the exact same DELETE request again, it would have the same effect. That is the meaning of idempotency. It really has no bearing on the why. It is just guaranteed protocol semantics

PUT. It's basically used to update a server resource, or create a user resource. In both cases, the URI is known by the user and is the requested URI. For example

PUT /customers/1234
// some body with name to change

The resource URI is known and the client post a message with a representation to update the resource. If the requested operation meats these requirements, then PUT should be used. In contrast if we are creating a new server resource (customer), then we would use POST

POST /customer
// customer representation

Notice the URI of the new customer is not known, because it has not been created. If the POST id successful, we should be back a Location header with the new URI

HTTP/1.1 201
Location: /customers/12345

That was going a little off on a tangent, but getting back to PUT. PUT is idempotent, because no matter how many times we make the exact above PUT request, the result will be the same. No server state will be affected. On the other hand, if we repeated make the same POST request, more new customer may be created

All that being said, we should do out best to follow the protocol semantics. POST is like a wild card for operations that can't be applied to any other method semantics.

And to answer your repeated question, "why should i care?", as noted about DELETE, idempotency is just a matter of guaranteed protocol semantics, it is not a matter of "but i never plan to do this opertion again", it's a matter of "if someone does perform this exact operation again, there is no effect"

Upvotes: 1

Chinnu
Chinnu

Reputation: 95

There are mainly four methods are used in restful api.they are:

  • GET-Used to get some resources
  • POST-Used to create resource
  • DELETE-Used to remove resource
  • PUT-Used to update resource. As you mentioned above we can use post or get for the purpose of put and delete functions.But in programming we can use this method in place where it indicate its purpose so that others will get an idea of what the code is doing

Upvotes: 0

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