Question

I am using MVC C#.

Can somebody give an example on why one would use

[HttpPost/HttpGet] 

for an Action. How can an active have both – what is the practical use?

Answer 1

Let’s say you have a Login action which provides the user with a login screen, then receives the user name and password back after the user submits the form:

public ActionResult Login() {
    return View();
}

public ActionResult Login(string userName, string password) {
    // do login stuff
    return View();
}

MVC isn’t being given clear instructions on which action is which, even though we can tell by looking at it. If you add [HttpGet] to the first action and [HttpPost] to the section action, MVC clearly knows which action is which.

Why? See Request Methods. Long and short: When a user views a page, that’s a GET request and when a user submits a form, that’s usually a POST request. HttpGet and HttpPost just restrict the action to the applicable request type.

[HttpGet]
public ActionResult Login() {
    return View();
}

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Login(string userName, string password) {
    // do login stuff
    return View();
}

You can also combine the request method attributes if your action serves requests from multiple verbs:

[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Get | HttpVerbs.Post)].