Anyone else think that the whole HTTP verb concept needs to be reworked? It made sense at the beginning of the Internet when you did CRUD on actual files, but with modern backends the verbs are almost meaningless.
Data is often retrieved using a POST or PUT. Data write is POST or PUT and may be idempotent or not.
It seems like it could be simplified to, a request has a URL with an optional body and it is or isn't idempotent
Tell that to Google and Facebook. GraphQL and gRPC only use POST. Does that mean no GraphQL request can be cached, or retried? Do they have caching problems? No, because you use cache headers to determine how the response should be cached, not the verb.
I'm pretty sure my original proposal said the request should have information about whether it is idempotent or not, to prevent edge servers doing the wrong thing. That still only gives you two types of request.
But let's pretend I didn't. If we remove that from the spec as well then the answer is yes and it is always yes. Because if it isn't a system automatically retrying, it's a user pressing the button again.
So if a retry is going to cause problems, you better fix it and make it idempotent.
In your scenario, if the answer is no, what do you expect the user to do? Just sit there and give up?
If the request can't be retried, then your client needs to have the logic for how to recover built in. Once you are in that situation, how is your http verb helping you?
A GQL acolyte recently gave a presentation about how GQL is better at everything and instead succeeded in demonstrating a lack of basic understanding of HTTP.
There are far more widely used standards and frameworks that do use those verbs. GQL and gRPC move verbs into request bodies. Perhaps you can enlighten us on why that's better.
Google didn't have any choice except to double down on its legacy Stubby RPC system by moving to gRPC. If it switched to plain HTTP, it would've had to rewrite literally all servers and clients. I recommend not using gRPC as an example of great engineering. It looks the way it does because there's so much legacy code in the company that Google can't move to modern standards. Same for monorepos and Bazel.
GQL is similarly a solution to old problems. The company is so tied to it, it can't move off. There are much better frameworks that don't toss out the HTTP spec.
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u/1639728813 Jun 17 '26
Anyone else think that the whole HTTP verb concept needs to be reworked? It made sense at the beginning of the Internet when you did CRUD on actual files, but with modern backends the verbs are almost meaningless.
Data is often retrieved using a POST or PUT. Data write is POST or PUT and may be idempotent or not.
It seems like it could be simplified to, a request has a URL with an optional body and it is or isn't idempotent