Question

I have a database generated page which shows lots of links.

This page consists of 3 colums. In the first column, it gets the links from the database. In the second column it generated + links, and in the last column, it generated a – link

So basically, each row generated consists of a url link, a + link and a – link.

• When the user clicks on the link, it goes to the appropriate page
• when the user clicks on the + next to any given row, the database is updated to reflect that the user likes that link
• If the user clicks – next to any given row, the database is updated to reflect that the user does not like that link.

What is the proper way to recreate this page to stop web bots from emulating link clicks? Specifically, what do I need to do to the + and – links to stop bots from clicking them?

Answer 1

Use forms and POST instead of links and GET.

GET is supposed to be used only for Safe / Idempotent operations.