HTTP Methods

Up to this point, you've checked the results of your exercises and activities through your web browser, just visiting an address, your localhost, and getting some results back in the form of a web page. This way of consuming an HTTP server utilizes what is known as the GET method. You have seen the methods when you worked with the HTTP clients, which are the only way to use anything other than GET or POST. Through your web browser, however, you can also use the POST method, which is often used in order to send form data. It is possible to send form data through GET, but this method pollutes the URL with parameters and has some limitations in terms of the size of the data that can be sent.

There are other methods that are often used, these being PUT and DELETE, but you need a specific client to utilize them. That is why a set of these four methods is used in order to build what is called a REST API. There are other methods, but it is beyond the scope of this book...