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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-24T16:13:23+00:00

So we have an unsubscribe link – this is by it’s nature an HTTP

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So we have an unsubscribe link – this is by it’s nature an HTTP GET.

The appropriate RFC says this should be idempotent but to my mind the user expectation will be that they are clicking a link to take an action.

I’ve implemented this so that the link takes you to a page that has a big confirm button which then updates your subscription, confirms that and displays the final state of your account (we have more than one type of subscription)

But I wonder if it would not be a better UX if the person simply skipped the confirm button stage…

The answer to the question “Am I overthinking this?” is definitely yes but I wondered what people’s views were on balancing the best practice of an idempotent GET with the best practice of not confounding user’s expectations…

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  1. Editorial Team

    I’d say it doesn’t matter what RFC2616 section 9.1.2 says, because you’re already violating the much more important definition in seciton 9.1.1:

    In particular, the convention has been established that the GET and
    HEAD methods SHOULD NOT have the significance of taking an action
    other than retrieval.

    Imagine the effect of a web-crawler (e.g., Google) following all the links from one of your pages that contains this link. Do you really want that to cause an unsubscribe operation? That would certainly be a bad user experience!

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