Requests

HTTP methods

Choose GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, and OPTIONS according to the action a request asks the server to perform.

8 minute lesson

~~~

The method describes the request’s intent.

  • GET retrieves a resource.
  • POST submits data or starts an action.
  • PUT replaces a resource.
  • PATCH updates part of a resource.
  • DELETE removes a resource.
  • HEAD asks for the headers a GET would return, without the body.
  • OPTIONS asks which communication options are available.

For a notes API, you might use:

GET /notes
POST /notes
GET /notes/42
PATCH /notes/42
DELETE /notes/42

HTTP does not automatically enforce what a method means. A server could delete data in response to GET, but that would violate expectations and cause problems for caches, crawlers, and browsers.

Lesson completed