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

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 Create a new resource.

  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 Send data to the server.

• 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.