Where to find HTTP methods examples?

Question

HTTP defines eight methods (sometimes referred to as "verbs")

Can you help me find examples for each one so I can test and understand them better?

Answer 1

I guess reading RFC 2616 explains all: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2616.html

Answer 2

Try this: http://rest.blueoxen.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?HttpMethods

It also gives an overview of their properties.

Answer 3

You can experiment with the different HTTP methods using the cURL command line tool. For example:

curl --head http://www.google.co.uk

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:33:24 GMT
Expires: -1
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Set-Cookie: PREF=ID=a2a414b9a84c8ffd:TM=1240155204:LM=1240155204:S=16kZnqzeSxIJT3jv; expires=Tue, 19-Apr-2011 15:33:24 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.co.uk
Server: gws
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

• The -X option lets you specify an HTTP method other than GET.

Answer 4

First you should take a look into the HTTP 1.1 specification, especially the section method definitions.

• OPTIONS Get information about how the server allows to communicate with.

  Request:

  OPTIONS * HTTP/1.1
  Host: example.com
  

  Response:

  HTTP/1.1 200 OK
  Date: …
  Allow: OPTIONS, GET, HEAD, POST, PUT, DELETE, TRACE
  Content-Length: 0
  

• GET Retrieve a resource.

  Request:

  GET /foo/bar HTTP/1.1
  Host: example.com
  

  Response:

  HTTP/1.1 200 OK
  Date: …
  Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8
  Content-Length: 12345
   
  <!DOCTYPE …
  

• HEAD Like GET, but returns just the HTTP header.

  Request:

  HEAD /foo/bar HTTP/1.1
  Host: example.com
  

  Response:

  HTTP/1.1 200 OK
  Date: …
  Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8
  Content-Length: 12345
  

• POST Send data to the server.

  Request:

  POST /foo/bar HTTP/1.1
  Host: example.com
  Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
   
  action=addentry&subject=Hello,%20World
  

  Response:

  HTTP/1.1 201 Created
  Date: …
  Content-Length: 0
  Location: http://example.com/foo/bar
  

• PUT Create a new resource.

• DELETE Delete an existing resource.

• TRACE Return the request headers sent by the client.

  Request:

  TRACE /foo/bar HTTP/1.1
  Host: example.com
  

  Response:

  HTTP/1.1 200 OK
  Date: …
  Content-Length: 17
   
  Host: example.com
  

I don’t know exactly if these examples are correct. Feel free to correct them.

Answer 5

HI John,

You can test and learn about HTTP WEB Request using the next: http request testing tool I use it to send different http request and analyze the response