Hacker News Reader

Funny you should say that:

https://httpwg.org/http-extensions/draft-ietf-httpbis-safe-m...

I understand the benefits of QUERY over GET because GET is expected to return a resource in the response. Why not just use POST though? Send a post message to a server asking to conduct a search and sending the results of that query in the response?

QUERY is the one missing method to cover all reasonable combinations of safe/idempotent/neither and whether (if safety or idempotency applies) a body needs taken into account to identify a semantically identical request.

Not idempotent: POST

idempotent/not safe: PUT (body matters), DELETE (no body)

safe: QUERY (body matters)/GET (no body)

That’s why QUERY is needed. POST is not a good substitute.

The biggest issue I've personally experienced is semantics when wrapping your head a design or debugging a service you aren't familiar with.

"POST" has come to imply a "write" operation, and mixing up the the reads and writes of a system leads to cognitive dissonance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com