Should you send a payload in an HTTP GET request?
It is a common myth that we could not pass the request body in the HTTP GET request. HTTP 1.1 specification neither enforces nor suggests this behavior.
This means it is up to implementing the application web servers- Flask, uWSGI, etc.- to see if it parses the request body in the HTTP GET request. To do this, just check the request object you would be getting in your favorite framework.
What can we do with this information?
Say you are modeling an analytics service like Google Analytics in which you are exposing an endpoint that returns you the data point depending on the requirements. The requirements specified here could be a large, complex JSON.
Passing this query in the URL of the GET request as a query param is not convenient as it would require you to serialize and escape the JSON string before passing.
This is a perfect use case where the complex JSON query can be passed as a request body in the HTTP GET request, giving a good user experience.
So, does any popular tool uses this convention?
Yes. ElasticSearch- one of the most popular search utilities, uses this convention.
The search endpoint of ElasticSearch is a GET endpoint where the complex search queries in JSON format are sent in the request payload.
Here's the video of my explaining this in-depth 👇 do check it out
Can we send data in an HTTP GET request? Most people think, No. The truth is, we can send the data in the request payload of an HTTP GET request so long as our webserver can understand it.
In this video, we go through the HTTP 1.1 specification and see what it says about the GET requests, write a simple Flask application to see that we can indeed process the payload of a GET request if we want to, and, more importantly, go through a real-world example where it was essential to send data in the request payload.
Outline:
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Yours truly,
Arpit
Until next time, stay awesome :)
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Just a question with fellow developers, How can I cache post call on CDN. Passing big payload with Post call and can't convert it into get
Just because you can , it doesn't mean you should . By the way, if we are talking about possibilities, the HTTP protocol actually enables us to even develop custom methods, not being limited to GET, POST, PUT, etc. . I could develop a method called SAUDATE if I wanted to . But is that a good idea ?
One example of HTTP GET with payload is in Elastic Search APIs where query requests are GETs but the query is sent in the request payload. While you can send the payload in GET requests, and it will be sent over the wire as well, many server implementations or application processing frameworks will ignore the same, and parsed framework request object may not show up in the payload.
You can, but it's bad practice. If you want to use a body, do a POST.
Very interesting article