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From: Mikeal Rogers <mikeal.rogers@gmail.com>
To: dev@couchdb.apache.org
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Subject: Re: Allow overridden request methods
Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 10:11:29 -0700
References: <94efd83c0905122129s216f5d0bu26690c2043ad1737@mail.gmail.com>
 <94efd83c0905130943t2ae9b63eoe9cdf2beac991c44@mail.gmail.com>
 <B1CDC176-797C-4571-92C4-69DE67EEDD22@apache.org>


On May 13, 2009, at May 13, 20099:58 AM, Jan Lehnardt wrote:

>
> On 13 May 2009, at 18:43, Jared Scheel wrote:
>
>> Sorry for responding to my original message instead of a reply in the
>> thread, but I seem to be having some issues with the mailing list.
>> Oliver, you are right, I could use a javascript wrapper for flash.  
>> The
>> problem with that is that it introduces a second dependency to
>> interact with the REST interface.
>
> It adds a second API and complexity to CouchDB to support
> non-standard clients. I.e: If you don't speak HTTP, you can't
> talk to CouchDB.

In nearly every REST API I've written in the last 5 years I've checked  
for x-http-method-override and just changed the request method in the  
request before it hits the rest of the application logic.

Not too long ago, Safari didn't support PUT and everyone, especially  
Google, got on the x-http-method-override bandwagon. In fact, I  
believe all of their APIs still support x-http-method-override.

This silly limitation is a lot more common than you would think and  
it's usually done under some kind of "security" pretense. Sure, this  
particular time around it's Flash, which I certainly couldn't care  
less about, but I think as more clients start using CouchDB you're  
going to see this come up more and more.

I think it's unfair to characterize these clients as "not supporting  
HTTP" when in reality they support a sandboxed HTTP API which  
unnecessarily limits their usage.

-Mikeal