Question

HTML specifies that web forms can use methods “GET and “POST”, thus interactive web applications must use one of these when they want to modify existing resources. The HTTP standard says on POST a servers should accept “…a new subordinate of the resource identified by the Request-URI… “

So we must technically violate the standard whenever the form does not create a new object, oh well. But what is the least-worst way to do it?

1. Always access a subordinate: POST /hounds/ {id="rover", ...} creates or modifies “/hounds/rover”
2. Always access directly: POST /hounds/rover {...} creates or modifies “/hounds/rover”
3. Create subordinates, but modify directly. So you create as in 1, and modify as in 2. Report an error if the client tries the wrong operation.
4. Support both 1. and 2 for both kinds of operations without an error.

Answer 1

Option 2: POST /hounds/rover?_method=PUT.

Since HTML does not support all specified or extended HTTP verbs, workarounds like this must be used.