GET vs POST (was: Preventing data from being reposted?)

Richard Lynch a écrit :

POST versus GET is an aesthetic choice, not Security, not Performance.

Of course, I agree it's not really a 'security' choice. But another think you can think of can be found in the HTTP/1.1 spec (rfc 2616) in the 'Safe Methods' section [1]. To summarize: - GET (and HEAD) should only retreive things, with no side effect - POST (and others) means taking action (with side effects) It's 'sould', not 'must' or 'must not'. Anyway, I think its worth a few seconds to think about it. Christophe From [1] : ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9.1.1 Safe Methods Implementors should be aware that the software represents the user in their interactions over the Internet, and should be careful to allow the user to be aware of any actions they might take which may have an unexpected significance to themselves or others. In particular, the convention has been established that the GET and HEAD methods SHOULD NOT have the significance of taking an action other than retrieval. These methods ought to be considered "safe". This allows user agents to represent other methods, such as POST, PUT and DELETE, in a special way, so that the user is made aware of the fact that a possibly unsafe action is being requested. Naturally, it is not possible to ensure that the server does not generate side-effects as a result of performing a GET request; in fact, some dynamic resources consider that a feature. The important distinction here is that the user did not request the side-effects, so therefore cannot be held accountable for them. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [1] 9.1.1 Safe Methods (pg 51) ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2616.txt