Idempotency is the main difference between PUT and POST. Similar to the GET request, PUT request is also idempotent in HTTP, which means it will produce the same results if executed once more multiple times.
PUT is idempotent, so you can cache the response. Response of Post method are not cacheable, unless the response includes appropriate Cache-Control or Expires header fields. However, the 303 (See Other) response can be used to direct the user agent to retrieve a cacheable resource.
Use PUT when you want to modify a singular resource which is already a part of resources collection. PUT replaces the resource in its entirety. Use PATCH if request updates part of the resource.
In case of Put, If the Request-URI refers to an already existing resource – an update operation will happen, otherwise create operation should happen if Request-URI is a valid resource URI
Another practical difference PUT and POST method in the context of REST WebService are that POST is often used to create a new entity, and PUT is often used to update an existing entity. If you replace an existing entity using PUT than you should be aware that if only a subset of data elements is passed then the rest will be replaced by empty or null.
No comments:
Post a Comment