Hacker News Reader

Comment by _8j50 | Hacker News Reader

This is cool and all but why not just expand the scope of GET requests in newer HTTP standards? Maybe have a X-GET-QUERY header to indicate the type if GET request? the problem I see with a new method is that it isn't just webservers that need to support it, it is also webapps. Ideally this would be transparent to the webapp (which would just see really big arrays of GET params). The user-agents (browsers) would ideally support this transparently where as with a new method the JS/HTML would need to explicitly support it.

View on HN

> Maybe have a X-GET-QUERY header to indicate the type if GET request?

Note that using the "X-" prefix has been deprecated since 2012: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6648

Wow, news to me. Thanks

Here's the relevant section of the guidelines: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6648#section-3

   Creators of new parameters to be used in the context of application
   protocols:

   1.  SHOULD assume that all parameters they create might become
       standardized, public, commonly deployed, or usable across
       multiple implementations.

   2.  SHOULD employ meaningful parameter names that they have reason to
       believe are currently unused.

   3.  SHOULD NOT prefix their parameter names with "X-" or similar
       constructs.

   Note: If the relevant parameter name space has conventions about
   associating parameter names with those who create them, a parameter
   name could incorporate the organization's name or primary domain name
   (see Appendix B for examples).

One of the issues that QUERY solves is that POST is overloaded and is being used for purposes beyond its intended responsibility. Shifting that overloading to GET feels to me like just another hacky approach. I prefer the well-defined, single responsibility that QUERY brings and restores to POST.

Once browsers offer support, the web app+ server would need to support it. Both of those are in control of the devs. The real problem lies in getting infrastructure teams to update the expensive F5 load balancers, and PA/CP/TP firewalls to process the requests. Those aren’t in control of the devs (unless they’re operating together well as a team)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com