Question

Some web frameworks offer the possibility to “override” the HTTP method with a hidden form field:

<form method="POST">
  <input type="hidden" type="_method" value="PUT">
  ...
</form>

Is it possible to override the HTTP method with the Play framework?

Answer 1

NOTE: This is for Play 1.x only.

Looking at the source code for the Router.route() method, it uses the x-http-method-override parameter in the query string. According to this bug report you should also be able to achieve this using HTTP Headers, but I couldn’t see this in the source code.

To get it to work, you need to add the override to the request string. I ran the following example to get it to work.

<form action="@{Application.form}?x-http-method-override=PUT" method="POST">
  <input type="submit" type="go" value="go">
</form>

If you set the logging level to TRACE, you will see the following output, showing the method has changed. You should see an output like —

08:20:34,855 TRACE ~ init: begin
08:20:34,858 TRACE ~ Route: /application/form - x-http-method-override=PUT
08:20:34,859 TRACE ~ request method POST overriden to PUT
08:20:34,860 TRACE ~ ------- public static void controllers.Application.form()
08:20:34,861 TRACE ~ init: end true

You can also check the request.method in your controller to confirm.