WEBVTT 0 00:00.720 --> 00:11.490 OK, I want to talk a little bit more about why HTTP forms cannot submit, like PUT and DELETE requests. Why... 1 00:11.490 --> 00:14.040 are we only limited to GET and POST? 2 00:14.550 --> 00:16.170 I'm just ignoring dialog, by the way. 3 00:16.650 --> 00:17.670 But why are we limited 🤷🏻‍♂️? 4 00:17.690 --> 00:18.630 It's so weird, right? 5 00:19.230 --> 00:26.100 Well, firstly, I want to say that HTML is inextricably bound to HTTP. 6 00:26.320 --> 00:31.400 HTML is kind of just like the human interface of HTTP. 7 00:31.710 --> 00:36.150 Remember that HTTP is just the protocol that allows machines to speak to each other. 8 00:36.390 --> 00:39.690 And HTML, of course is that visual representation to us. 9 00:39.960 --> 00:46.560 And this means it's questionable why HTML does not support all the relevant methods that you can find 10 00:46.560 --> 00:48.900 in the HTTP specification. 11 00:49.150 --> 00:55.290 In other words, why can machines PUT and DELETE resources but humans can't 🤔? 12 00:55.290 --> 00:56.610 We can't do it in our code. 13 00:57.630 --> 00:58.590 Well, it's a great question. 14 00:58.980 --> 01:06.210 And let me just clarify by saying that browsers themselves do understand and support PUT and DELETE. 15 01:06.360 --> 01:10.980 It's only the HTML protocol for forms which does not allow it. 16 01:11.220 --> 01:18.180 For instance, a browser will initiate a POST requests via AJAX, but it just won't do it via an HTML 17 01:18.180 --> 01:18.670 form. 18 01:19.450 --> 01:20.400 "Okay Clyde, that's cool... 19 01:20.400 --> 01:21.480 but why is this?" 20 01:21.720 --> 01:23.760 Well, that is a very, very good question. 21 01:24.330 --> 01:29.420 And I had to do a lot of digging around, a lot of reading to find out why this is the case. 22 01:29.430 --> 01:33.270 Not many people know about this and this information was very hard for me to find. 23 01:33.570 --> 01:40.800 As it turns out, PUT and DELETE methods were included in drafts in the early HTML5 spec. 24 01:41.040 --> 01:41.460 I know, 25 01:41.590 --> 01:42.120 weird, right? 26 01:42.120 --> 01:44.940 But they were later removed in subsequent drafts. 27 01:45.180 --> 01:52.500 Mozilla had actually implemented these methods in their browser, their meta browser in Firefox, but again 28 01:52.590 --> 01:53.610 later removed. 29 01:53.940 --> 01:59.370 What was the rationale for removing these from the specs and who decided to remove it from the specs? 30 01:59.730 --> 02:04.080 Well, that comes down to the W3C - the World Wide Web Consortium. 31 02:04.320 --> 02:09.900 They decided to remove them from the spec. The W3C by the way is just an organization that governs 32 02:09.930 --> 02:10.520 web. 33 02:10.590 --> 02:17.130 And after tons and tons of digging ⛏️, I managed to find a discussion that took place by the W3C forum 34 02:17.550 --> 02:24.810 all the way back in 2010 in bug report 10671, in case you're interested. 35 02:25.110 --> 02:29.850 And in this discussion, there were tons of developers that were in support of using alternative methods 36 02:29.850 --> 02:31.080 other than just GET or POST. 37 02:31.500 --> 02:36.350 And let me just say that GET and POST have a clear, content neutral rationale. 38 02:36.660 --> 02:43.020 GET is used to retrieve the content of a URL that is safe to repeat and possibly even cache. 39 02:43.200 --> 02:50.960 And you typically use POST when the data may not be safe to repeat, execute speculatively or even cache. 40 02:51.270 --> 02:55.410 We've seen this. We know this already. And during these discussions on this forum... 41 02:55.410 --> 03:00.210 about this bug 🐛, people couldn't really find a rationale for including PUT or DELETE. 42 03:01.620 --> 03:06.060 Because PUTs and DELETEs are pretty much covered by the POST request. 43 03:10.720 --> 03:17.380 Creating or destroying data in a POST, for example, is not something that's safe, 44 03:17.410 --> 03:19.420 it's not something you want to cache or repeat. 45 03:19.960 --> 03:24.400 And what these developers were saying was that there's not really, therefore, a need to semantically 46 03:24.610 --> 03:29.800 differentiate, a PUT and DELETE from POST when it comes to HTML submissions. 47 03:30.960 --> 03:35.250 In other words, they were saying there is no semantic benefit. Whew. So you had a lot of people on the... 48 03:35.250 --> 03:39.290 one side saying that, you know, it makes sense to have a PUT and DELETE. 49 03:39.300 --> 03:42.930 Then you had all these developers on the other side saying, well, semantically it doesn't really make 50 03:42.930 --> 03:43.230 sense. 51 03:43.240 --> 03:45.030 It's just the same as a POST request. 52 03:45.270 --> 03:48.260 And of course, after much debate, that forum, or... 53 03:48.330 --> 03:49.890 that bug 🐛, was closed. 54 03:50.520 --> 03:56.760 And this question was opened up on another forum known as the HTML Working Group Forum, and it had an issue... 55 03:56.760 --> 03:59.370 number of 195, just in case you are wondering. 56 03:59.580 --> 04:03.150 And this issue - 195 - was presented to the chairs of the committee. 57 04:03.150 --> 04:08.970 It was presented to a gentleman called Cameron Jones who stepped up to the plate and he said he would... 58 04:08.970 --> 04:13.740 draft a proposal, which he did on the 29th of May 2014. 59 04:13.960 --> 04:19.190 And this draft that was submitted on the 29th of May 2014 hasn't really gone anywhere. 60 04:19.800 --> 04:21.120 So I don't know. At the moment... 61 04:21.120 --> 04:26.190 we're kind of sitting in a bit of flux, um, where we've got GET and POST. 62 04:26.760 --> 04:27.630 We've got dialog, 63 04:27.640 --> 04:27.900 yes... 64 04:27.900 --> 04:33.780 but the main ones are GET and POST. And you've got a whole lot of people on the one hand wanting to endorse 65 04:33.780 --> 04:35.480 other methods like PUT and DELETE. 66 04:35.490 --> 04:39.720 And then you've got other arguments on the other hand, where the developers are just saying, just... 67 04:39.720 --> 04:41.370 treat it as a POST request, who cares! 68 04:41.520 --> 04:44.100 And the working draft is kind of just still sitting there. 69 04:44.220 --> 04:45.560 Nothing's really been done about it. 70 04:45.780 --> 04:52.470 And perhaps the only reason why we don't have PUTs and DELETEs and other methods is that no one really 71 04:52.470 --> 04:57.930 has time to fully devote to writing a specification defining all of this. 72 04:58.290 --> 05:00.300 So there you go. I hope you find that very interesting. 73 05:00.360 --> 05:06.120 You know, a lot of people spend most of their, if not all of their coding career not understanding exactly... 74 05:06.120 --> 05:09.480 why the HTML spec does not have other methods. 75 05:09.750 --> 05:10.760 So, there you go... 76 05:10.980 --> 05:13.500 just in case you were wondering. See you in the next letter 👋.