HTTP request methods - HTTP | MDN

MDN Web Docs 2 min read Original

Summary

MDN reference table categorizing HTTP request methods by safety, idempotency, and cacheability.

GET, QUERY, HEAD, and OPTIONS are safe, idempotent, and cacheable. TRACE is safe and idempotent but not cacheable. PUT and DELETE are idempotent but not safe or cacheable. POST is neither safe, idempotent, nor cacheable by default. PATCH is neither safe nor idempotent. CONNECT is none of the three. POST and PATCH can be cached only when responses carry freshness info and a matching Content-Location header.

Links to the HTTP Semantics spec sections for each method, a browser compatibility table, and related pages on status codes and headers.

Safe, idempotent, and cacheable request methods

The following table lists HTTP request methods and their categorization in terms of safety, cacheability, and idempotency.

Method	Safe	Idempotent	Cacheable
`GET`	Yes	Yes	Yes
`QUERY`	Yes	Yes	Yes
`HEAD`	Yes	Yes	Yes
`OPTIONS`	Yes	Yes	No
`TRACE`	Yes	Yes	No
`PUT`	No	Yes	No
`DELETE`	No	Yes	No
`POST`	No	No	Conditional*
`PATCH`	No	No	Conditional*
`CONNECT`	No	No	No

* POST and PATCH are cacheable when responses explicitly include freshness information and a matching Content-Location header.

Specifications

Specification
HTTP Semantics # GET
HTTP Semantics # OPTIONS
HTTP Semantics # HEAD
HTTP Semantics # CONNECT
HTTP Semantics # DELETE
HTTP Semantics # POST
HTTP Semantics # PUT