CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rest
tintin
tintin

Reputation: 5867

Invoking PUT request multiple times

I am trying to access a REST enpoint that adds a book in bookshelf location.

PUT /bookshelf/books/1

HTTP/1.1 201 Created

Now if I try to add book again with id 1

PUT /bookshelf/books/1

HTTP/1.1 500 Internal server error

I get 500 Internal server error, with the response message 

 "Resource already exists, cannot add duplicate item"

Now this looks wrong to me. Is this a right kind of response to expect from the server. Considering the operation is PUT, I feel the clients should feel free to run the PUT invocations to do again and again. Is my understanding correct?

If not 500 should the server just return HTTP/1.1 200 OK?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 857

Answers (1)

strickt01
strickt01

Reputation: 4048

PUT is idempotent - if you call it multiple times you should get the same result. i.e. the object is created/updated as per your request. Returning 500 to a PUT request because the object already exists goes against RESTful semantics. I would also expect 200 back in this instance.

Upvotes: 1

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