Question

Hi I know this is a bit wired, but right now my project has gone a bit mad. We have a RESTful application which can provide a bunch of services, we all know that DELETE is a verb to use to delete stuff. However, as we also know that HTML form cannot produce DELETE am I right? How do we solve this issue? And suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Answer 1

You need to use javascript for that. Here is an example:

    <script type="text/javascript">
    function getXMLHttpRequest() {
        try { return new XMLHttpRequest(); } catch(e) {}
        try { return new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP.6.0"); } catch(e) {}
        try { return new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP.3.0"); } catch(e) {}
        try { return new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP"); } catch(e) {}
        try { return new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); } catch(e) {}
        throw new Error("This browser does not support XMLHttpRequest.");
    }

    function sendDelete(url, confirmation, successUrl) {
        if (confirm(confirmation)) {
            var r = getXMLHttpRequest();
            r.open("DELETE", url, false);
            r.send();
            if (r.status < 200 || r.status > 299) {
                alert(r.responseText);
            } else {
                if (successUrl == null) {
                    location.reload(true);
                } else {
                    location.href = successUrl;
                }
            }
        }
    }
    </script>

Then you can just call the sendDelete() method from the onclick=”” of your web page button.