I'm in the process of writing a testing framework for an application, and I am not allowed to update, delete, move, or basically do anything with the data used by this application. For GET requests I need to test this is no problem, but PUT, POST and DELETE methods that change data this obviously is not the case.
Is there any way to send a POST request without any body, and still get a response that shows the url can take a request? Or in other words, how can I show that a url that is a POST is up and able to take requests, without actually sending the POST request and changing something in the database? (unfortunately its not possible to add a test object to database and run requests on that).
I need to do this programmatically in either Java or C# as well.
There is no general way to 'test' if a POST request will work.
Most servers will likely emit a 400 error for these endpoints, which doesn't tell you a lot.
The most standard way to see if something is able to accept a POST request at all, is probably by doing an OPTIONS request and using the Allow header in the response to get the list of supported methods.
There is no guarantee that this is going to be correct, but many modern frameworks do a decent job populating this list. This is likely going to give you the most accurate, but still imperfect results.
You should not send an empty POST request anywhere because it could have a meaning and you could make unexpected changes to a server. For this kind of introspection stuff, stick to the 'safe' methods.
I'm calling a third party upload document rest API from my spring controller, and I'm passing some fields in the request to the API where the upload document API returns a response, but that response doesn't have any of the values which I had passed to it.
I need to update my database with the response received.
In Single threaded mode it's OK, but how should I save it in case of concurrent access as sometimes it may be like one response may get saved for another user.
The third party API is rejecting to send back any of the values I pass in the request.
Because it's an official system, I can't provide any code.
But still, we are using a REST template to call the API which will have request parameters like user id, request number, and file as a byte array. And the response that we get is just the file name, and the status as doc upload successful. So when accessed concurrently, it can happen that the status and filename that we get in response will be saved against some other user.
Please advise how can I make my code thread safe as the rest API doesn't send any of the values in response.
I'm creating a headless API that's going to drive an Angular front end. I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out how I should handle user authentication though.
Obviously the API should run over SSL, but the question that's coming up is how should I send the request that contains the user's password: over GET or POST. It's a RESTFUL API, so what I'm doing is retrieving information meaning it should get a GET request. But sending the password over get means it's part of the URI, right? I know even a GET request is encrypted over HTTPS, but is that still the correct way? Or is this a case to break from RESTFUL and have the data in the body or something (can a GET request have data in the body?).
If you pass the credentials in a request header, you will be fine with either a GET or POST request. You have the option of using the established Authorization header with your choice of authentication scheme, or you can create custom headers that are specific to your API.
When using header fields as a means of communicating credentials, you do not need to fear the credentials being written to the access log as headers are not included in that log. Using header fields also conforms to REST standards, and should actually be utilized to communicate any meta-data relevant to the resource request/response. Such meta-data can include, but is not limited to, information like: collection size, pagination details, or locations of related resources.
In summary, always use header fields as a means of authentication/authorization.
mostly GET request will bind data in URL itself... so it is more redable than POST..
so if it is GET, there is a possibility to alive HISTORY LOG
Using ?user=myUsername&pass=MyPasswort is exactly like using a GET based form and, while the Referer issue can be contained, the problems regarding logs and history remain.
Sending any kind of sensitive data over GET is dangerous, even if it is HTTPS. These data might end up in log files at the server and will be included in the Referer header in links to or includes from other sides. They will also be saved in the history of the browser so an attacker might try to guess and verify the original contents of the link with an attack against the history.
You could send a data body with a get request too but this isn't supported by all libraries I guess.
Better to use POST or request headers. Look at other APIs and how they are handling it.
But you could still use GET with basic authentication like here: http://restcookbook.com/Basics/loggingin/
My company is currently writting a REST API where they allow querying for Active Directory specific information via a POST requests.
In the request body the following information gets sent to the API:
Filter (LDAP)
Properties to return (e.g userAccountControl, sAMAccountName)
From a personal point of view I would have definitely realised it via simple GET methods.
Is the POST method approach the recommended way to so? Are there any particular reasons to implement it with POST?
I can see slight advantages of using a POST request. It is certainly more secure for sending any sensitive data, because the body of the request is not cached by the user's browser and other network devices on the way. Also a POST request allows you to send an unlimited amount of data, but that is probably not relevant for this use case.
What's the difference when using GET or POST method? Which one is more secure? What are (dis)advantages of each of them?
(similar question)
It's not a matter of security. The HTTP protocol defines GET-type requests as being idempotent, while POSTs may have side effects. In plain English, that means that GET is used for viewing something, without changing it, while POST is used for changing something. For example, a search page should use GET, while a form that changes your password should use POST.
Also, note that PHP confuses the concepts a bit. A POST request gets input from the query string and through the request body. A GET request just gets input from the query string. So a POST request is a superset of a GET request; you can use $_GET in a POST request, and it may even make sense to have parameters with the same name in $_POST and $_GET that mean different things.
For example, let's say you have a form for editing an article. The article-id may be in the query string (and, so, available through $_GET['id']), but let's say that you want to change the article-id. The new id may then be present in the request body ($_POST['id']). OK, perhaps that's not the best example, but I hope it illustrates the difference between the two.
When the user enters information in a form and clicks Submit , there are two ways the information can be sent from the browser to the server: in the URL, or within the body of the HTTP request.
The GET method, which was used in the example earlier, appends name/value pairs to the URL. Unfortunately, the length of a URL is limited, so this method only works if there are only a few parameters. The URL could be truncated if the form uses a large number of parameters, or if the parameters contain large amounts of data. Also, parameters passed on the URL are visible in the address field of the browser not the best place for a password to be displayed.
The alternative to the GET method is the POST method. This method packages the name/value pairs inside the body of the HTTP request, which makes for a cleaner URL and imposes no size limitations on the forms output. It is also more secure.
The best answer was the first one.
You are using:
GET when you want to retrieve data (GET DATA).
POST when you want to send data (POST DATA).
There are two common "security" implications to using GET. Since data appears in the URL string its possible someone looking over your shoulder at Address Bar/URL may be able to view something they should not be privy to such as a session cookie that could potentially be used to hijack your session. Keep in mind everyone has camera phones.
The other security implication of GET has to do with GET variables being logged to most web servers access log as part of the requesting URL. Depending on the situation, regulatory climate and general sensitivity of the data this can potentially raise concerns.
Some clients/firewalls/IDS systems may frown upon GET requests containing an excessive amount of data and may therefore provide unreliable results.
POST supports advanced functionality such as support for multi-part binary input used for file uploads to web servers.
POST requires a content-length header which may increase the complexity of an application specific client implementation as the size of data submitted must be known in advance preventing a client request from being formed in an exclusively single-pass incremental mode. Perhaps a minor issue for those choosing to abuse HTTP by using it as an RPC (Remote Procedure Call) transport.
Others have already done a good job in covering the semantic differences and the "when" part of this question.
I use GET when I'm retrieving information from a URL and POST when I'm sending information to a URL.
You should use POST if there is a lot of data, or sort-of sensitive information (really sensitive stuff needs a secure connection as well).
Use GET if you want people to be able to bookmark your page, because all the data is included with the bookmark.
Just be careful of people hitting REFRESH with the GET method, because the data will be sent again every time without warning the user (POST sometimes warns the user about resending data).
This W3C document explains the use of HTTP GET and POST.
I think it is an authoritative source.
The summary is (section 1.3 of the document):
Use GET if the interaction is more like a question (i.e., it is a safe operation such as a query, read operation, or lookup).
Use POST if:
The interaction is more like an order, or
The interaction changes the state of the resource in a way that the
user would perceive (e.g., a subscription to a service), or
The user be held accountable for the results of the interaction.
Get and Post methods have nothing to do with the server technology you are using, it works the same in php, asp.net or ruby. GET and POST are part of HTTP protocol.
As mark noted, POST is more secure. POST forms are also not cached by the browser.
POST is also used to transfer large quantities of data.
The reason for using POST when making changes to data:
A web accelerator like Google Web Accelerator will click all (GET) links on a page and cache them. This is very bad if the links make changes to things.
A browser caches GET requests so even if the user clicks the link it may not send a request to the server to execute the change.
To protect your site/application against CSRF you must use POST. To completely secure your app you must then also generate a unique identifier on the server and send that along in the request.
Also, don't put sensitive information in the query string (only option with GET) because it shows up in the address bar, bookmarks and server logs.
Hopefully this explains why people say POST is 'secure'. If you are transmitting sensitive data you must use SSL.
GET and POST are HTTP methods which can achieve similar goals
GET is basically for just getting (retrieving) data, A GET should not have a body, so aside from cookies, the only place to pass info is in the URL and URLs are limited in length , GET is less secure compared to POST because data sent is part of the URL
Never use GET when sending passwords, credit card or other sensitive information!, Data is visible to everyone in the URL, Can be cached data .
GET is harmless when we are reloading or calling back button, it will be book marked, parameters remain in browser history, only ASCII characters allowed.
POST may involve anything, like storing or updating data, or ordering a product, or sending e-mail. POST method has a body.
POST method is secured for passing sensitive and confidential information to server it will not visible in query parameters in URL and parameters are not saved in browser history. There are no restrictions on data length. When we are reloading the browser should alert the user that the data are about to be re-submitted. POST method cannot be bookmarked
All or perhaps most of the answers in this question and in other questions on SO relating to GET and POST are misguided. They are technically correct and they explain the standards correctly, but in practice it's completely different. Let me explain:
GET is considered to be idempotent, but it doesn't have to be. You can pass parameters in a GET to a server script that makes permanent changes to data. Conversely, POST is considered not idempotent, but you can POST to a script that makes no changes to the server. So this is a false dichotomy and irrelevant in practice.
Further, it is a mistake to say that GET cannot harm anything if reloaded - of course it can if the script it calls and the parameters it passes are making a permanent change (like deleting data for example). And so can POST!
Now, we know that POST is (by far) more secure because it doesn't expose the parameters being passed, and it is not cached. Plus you can pass more data with POST and it also gives you a clean, non-confusing URL. And it does everything that GET can do. So it is simply better. At least in production.
So in practice, when should you use GET vs. POST? I use GET during development so I can see and tweak the parameters I am passing. I use it to quickly try different values (to test conditions for example) or even different parameters. I can do that without having to build a form and having to modify it if I need a different set of parameters. I simply edit the URL in my browser as needed.
Once development is done, or at least stable, I switch everything to POST.
If you can think of any technical reason that this is incorrect, I would be very happy to learn.
GET method is use to send the less sensitive data whereas POST method is use to send the sensitive data.
Using the POST method you can send large amount of data compared to GET method.
Data sent by GET method is visible in browser header bar whereas data send by POST method is invisible.
Use GET method if you want to retrieve the resources from URL. You could always see the last page if you hit the back button of your browser, and it could be bookmarked, so it is not as secure as POST method.
Use POST method if you want to 'submit' something to the URL. For example you want to create a google account and you may need to fill in all the detailed information, then you hit 'submit' button (POST method is called here), once you submit successfully, and try to hit back button of your browser, you will get error or a new blank form, instead of last page with filled form.
I find this list pretty helpful
GET
GET requests can be cached
GET requests remain in the browser history
GET requests can be bookmarked
GET requests should (almost) never be used when dealing with sensitive data
GET requests have length restrictions
GET requests should be used only to retrieve data
POST
POST requests are not cached
POST requests do not remain in the browser history
POST requests cannot be bookmarked
POST requests have no restrictions on data length
The GET method:
It is used only for sending 256 character date
When using this method, the information can be seen on the browser
It is the default method used by forms
It is not so secured.
The POST method:
It is used for sending unlimited data.
With this method, the information cannot be seen on the browser
You can explicitly mention the POST method
It is more secured than the GET method
It provides more advanced features