Should HTTP POST be discouraged?

Posted by Tomas Sedovic on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Tomas Sedovic
Published on 2010-05-18T09:22:43Z Indexed on 2010/05/18 9:30 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 238

Filed under:

http

|

post

|

best-practices

Quoting from the CouchDB documentation:

It is recommended that you avoid POST when possible, because proxies and other network intermediaries will occasionally resend POST requests, which can result in duplicate document creation.

To my understanding, this should not be happening on the protocol level (a confused user armed with a doubleclick is a completely different story). What is the best course of action, then?

Should we really try to avoid POST requests and replace them by PUT? I don't like that as they convey a different meaning.

Should we anticipate this and protect the requests by unique IDs where we want to avoid accidental duplication? I don't like that either: it complicates the code and prevents situations where multiple identical posts may be desired.

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about http

Cannot update, apt-get cannot fetch index files

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I have a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.10 from the iso 'ubuntu-11.10-desktop-amd64.iso'. I installed this in VMWare Fusion 4.1.1 running on OSX 10.7.3. When setting up the VM, I allowed easy install to take care of creating my user and installing VMWare tools. No problems during installation, everything… >>> More
the size of apt-get update lists is too big

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I ran a clean install to Ubuntu 12.04 and so far everything has been working well. I especially commend the Ubuntu team for this release. I only noticed that the size of repository update is now about ~13MB. Normally, it is about this size for the first time you run apt-get update after a clean install… >>> More
Quantal: Broken apt-index, cant fix dependencies

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I can't seem to add/remove/update packages Ubuntu software update has a notice about partial upgrades but fails Seems to be similar to this problem $ sudo apt-get update Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com quantal InRelease Ign http://security.ubuntu.com precise-security InRelease Ign… >>> More
12.04: Apt-Get Update: failure to fetch; can't connect to any sources

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I realize there are dozens of "apt-get update: failure to fetch" questions (I read through all I could find), but my present circumstance is unique to 12.04 and it affects all sources; not just launchpad. Additionally, I've tried several different servers in Europe and the U.S. as well as the "main… >>> More
How can I remove the Translation entries in apt?

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
This is the output of aptitude update: Ign http://archive.canonical.com natty InRelease Ign http://extras.ubuntu.com natty InRelease Ign http://dl.google.com stable InRelease Ign http://security.ubuntu.com natty-security InRelease Hit http://deb.torproject.org natty InRelease Get:1 http://dl.google… >>> More

Related posts about post

How to post a file via HTTP post in vb.net

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi all! Having a problem with sending a file via HTTP post in vb.net. I am trying to mimic the following HTML so the vb.net does the same thing. <form enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post" action="/cgi-bin/upload.cgi"> File to Upload: <input type="file" name="filename"/> <input… >>> More
Modify POST vars before post, using jQuery

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have a form, and a submit handler in jQuery. When the user submits the form, I want to modify (add) some parameters to the POST request, before it is despatched from the client to the server. i.e. User clicks 'submit' My jQuery submit hander begins execution... I create some new key/value pairs… >>> More
Change post categories while saving post

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi everybody, I'm trying to change post categories inside a save_post action callback function, but I get endless recursion, because wp_update_post method fires save_post action itself. Maybe somebody did this before& Or there is a way to change post categories without using wp_update_post method… >>> More
How to post Source Code inside a Wordpress blog post

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I just started a coding related wordpress bog to basicly discuss topics and store code snippets in. I installed a code syntax highlighter plugin which is very nice but I am having a problem. I just tried posting my first code related blog post and wordpress seems to only post some of my code and… >>> More
Mapping UrlEncoded POST Values in ASP.NET Web API

as seen on West-Wind - Search for 'West-Wind'
If there's one thing that's a bit unexpected in ASP.NET Web API, it's the limited support for mapping url encoded POST data values to simple parameters of ApiController methods. When I first looked at this I thought I was doing something wrong, because it seems mighty odd that you can bind query string… >>> More