Is sending POST data with a GET request valid?

Question

Using Curl for example, I can "post" data (send an entity-body) in a GET request. Is this a valid thing to do? With that I mean:

Is it not forbidden by any RFC specification?
Does someone out there use it with good reason?

score 31 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 14 '10 at 13:33

31

See RFC2616 - Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1, section 4.3 "Message Body":

A message-body MUST NOT be included in a request if the specification of the request method (section 5.1.1) does not allow sending an entity-body in requests.

In section 9.3 "GET" including an entity-body is not forbidden.

So, yes, you are allowed to send an entity-body with a HTTP GET request.

answered Jan 14 '10 at 13:33

5

Note: you are allowed to do this, but whether proxies will mangle your request, and whether the destination server will understand it, is anyone's guess. – Piskvor left the building Jan 14 '10 at 13:40
1

@Piskvor: You are right, I only answered the first part of the question. :) – Jan 14 '10 at 13:42

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 15 '15 at 17:01

7

There is a "good reason" use case out there.

elasticsearch uses entity-body data in GET requests to try to use the GET verb as a read while also allowing a more complicated specification than url alone allows (easily).

answered Apr 15 '15 at 17:01

underrun

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Is sending POST data with a GET request valid?

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