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POREST API - why use PUT DELETE POST GET?
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copied!<p>So, I was looking through some articles on creating REST API's. And some of them suggest using all types of HTTP requests: like <code>PUT</code> <code>DELETE</code> <code>POST</code> <code>GET</code>. We would create for example <em>index.php</em> and write API this way:</p> <pre><code>$method = $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD']; $request = split("/", substr(@$_SERVER['PATH_INFO'], 1)); switch ($method) { case 'PUT': ....some put action.... break; case 'POST': ....some post action.... break; case 'GET': ....some get action.... break; case 'DELETE': ....some delete action.... break; } </code></pre> <p>OK, granted - I don't know much about web services (yet). But, wouldn't it be easier to just accept <em>JSON</em> object through regular <code>POST</code> or <code>GET</code> (that would contain method name and all parameters) and then respond in JSON as well. We can easily serialize/deserialize via PHP's <code>json_encode()</code> and <code>json_decode()</code> and do whatever we want with that data without having to deal with different HTTP request methods.</p> <p>Am I missing something?</p> <p><strong>UPDATE 1:</strong></p> <p>Ok - after digging through various API's and learning a lot about <em>XML-RPC</em>, <em>JSON-RPC</em>, <em>SOAP</em>, <em>REST</em> I came to a conclusion that this type of API is sound. Actually stack exchange is pretty much using this approach on their sites and I do think that these people know what they are doing <a href="https://stackapps.com/questions/2/getting-started-with-the-api">Stack Exchange API</a>.</p>

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