On: How to Design Better APIs

[BulgarianIdiot]

Based on that description, you may be using PUT in conflict with its semantics (namely, idempotent way to replace an entire resource).

This is one reason why I don't bother with these methods and stick to GET and POST.

[Supermancho → BulgarianIdiot]

> I don't bother with these methods and stick to GET and POST.

Most people don't bother with them. If you need caching or want to be able to manipulate params in the browser/link to resources, use GET.

This idea that you need additional verbs for web services is a classic case of in-theory vs in-practice. Introducing non-trivial complication for very tiny benefit is a strange tradeoff.

[bcrosby95 → BulgarianIdiot]

PUT can be useful if you have a client that tries to handle errors. For example, our mobile application will automatically retry a PUT.