POST v. GET
Leston Drake
Can someone explain the difference between POST and GET for me?
TIA,
Leston
Septic Flesh
i had to use forms,
post: to sent data or values to a server side program..
and
get: to get some data from the server and sent them to the user...
or the opposite..:)
well the sure is that if the compiling didn;t work there was a message like
post method is not supported, so i had to use the get method and the
opposite.
:)
I hope a helped...
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"Leston Drake" <ldr...@lpsoftware.com> wrote in message
news:5.1.0.14.0.200206...@127.0.0.1...
Jay Blanchard
Can someone explain the difference between POST and GET for me?
Hate to do this to you Leston, but...
Can someone search the list archives for this answer for me? Can someone
search google for me please? Can someone read the documentation at
http://www.php.net for me please?
Nothing personal Leston :) Please search the archives and documentation...
HTH!
Jay
Stuart Dallas
> Can someone explain the difference between POST and GET for me?
Google is your friend...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&q=difference+between+post+and+get
--
Stuart
Chris Shiflett
misconception that the only significance of these terms is that they are
the valid options of the "method" attribute in an HTML form.
Unfortunately, searching the Web for the answer to this question might
yield incomplete results. It would be better to find a book on HTTP to
get the real answer, but I can give an overview here.
The GET method is by far the most popular request method used in HTTP
requests. It is a simple request for a resource located on the Web. The
simplest request might look something like this:
GET / HTTP/1.0
Or, in HTTP/1.1, since the Host header is required:
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.php.net
There is no content sent in a GET request. This is the type of request
your browser will send a Web server when you click on a link or type a
URL into the address bar, among other things.
With the POST method, the HTTP client sends content along with the
request in URL encoded format. A POST request might look something like
this:
POST / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.php.net
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 26
fname=chris&lname=shiflett
In this request, the browser is sending data to the Web server. This is
very similar to the way the server sends content back the the client.
How does this apply to HTML forms? Well, when a method of GET is used,
the browser will use the GET request to request the page designated by
the "action" attribute of the form. The form fields will be included as
name/value pairs in the URL. This is especially useful when you want the
user to be able to bookmark the results page, email the URL to a friend,
etc. This is how Google's search works. If you'll notice, you can
bookmark search results, and each time you visit the bookmark, you'll be
given the current results of that search. The browser won't prompt you
to reload the page.
GET has disadvantages as well. One is that depending on lengthy URLs is
dangerous. Apache has had, at least in the past, a hard upper limit of
1024 bytes in a URL. Browsers vary in the length of a URL they can
support. The W3C warns against depending on more than 255 bytes. Another
disadvantage of GET is that the data is included in the URL. If
sensitive information is included, not only can it be sniffed (a
vulnerability of POST also), but it can also be bookmarked, found in a
browser's history, seen by someone passing by, etc. If the request was
to log someone in, it would be possible to log in as that user simply by
visiting the URL. Even using SSL would not guard against these types of
vulnerabilities.
For many cases, it is preferable to use POST. When used in combination
with SSL, POST can provide a robust (no danger of having too much data)
and secure (the data will be encrypted in the SSL communication) method
for communicating data back to the server. This is what you will find on
forms where you are submitting a credit card number, for example.
As you can see, each method has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Many people do not take the time to really understand what these two
methods offer and will say, "just always use POST" or something of that
nature. Others will cite the differences in these methods by describing
how to receive the data in your server-side logic, but this also misses
the point.
That should give you a general idea. Like I said, a good book on HTTP
will help you much more.
Chris
Erik Price
"HTTP Made Really Easy"
http://www.jmarshall.com/easy/http/
after you read this web page (take you no more than 15 minutes), you
should consider browsing the actual HTTP spec, though it's pretty
technical and is very long.
Erik
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----
Erik Price
Web Developer Temp
Media Lab, H.H. Brown
pri...@hhbrown.com
Philip Olson
And, if you don't care if the data comes from
POST or GET (or COOKIE), then you can use the
superglobal $_REQUEST as it contains a mix of
data from all three.
http://www.example.com/foo.php?aname=leston
print $_REQUEST['aname'];
Which is similar to import_request_variables().
http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.predefined.php
http://www.php.net/import_request_variables
Regards,
Philip Olson
Matt Schroebel
> should consider browsing the actual HTTP spec, though it's pretty
> technical and is very long.
I've html'd the RFC2616 for easier reading and you can find it at http://www.php-faq.com/httpintro.php