Payloads of HTTP Request Methods

Question

The Wikipedia entry on HTTP lists the following HTTP request methods:

• HEAD: Asks for the response identical to the one that would correspond to a GET request, but without the response body.
• GET: Requests a representation of the specified resource.
• POST: Submits data to be processed (e.g., from an HTML form) to the identified resource. The data is included in the body of the request.
• PUT: Uploads a representation of the specified resource.
• DELETE: Deletes the specified resource.
• TRACE: Echoes back the received request, so that a client can see what (if any) changes or additions have been made by intermediate servers.
• OPTIONS: Returns the HTTP methods that the server supports for specified URL. This can be used to check the functionality of a web server by requesting '*' instead of a specific resource.
• CONNECT: Converts the request connection to a transparent TCP/IP tunnel, usually to facilitate SSL-encrypted communication (HTTPS) through an unencrypted HTTP proxy.
• PATCH: Is used to apply partial modifications to a resource.

I'm interested in knowing (specifically regarding the first five methods):

• which of these methods are able (supposed to?) receive payloads
  • of the methods that can receive payloads, how do they receive it?
    • via query string in URL?
    • via URL-encoded body?
    • via raw / chunked body?
    • via a combination of ([all / some] of) the above?

I appreciate all input, if you could share some (preferably light) reading that would be great too!

Answer 1

Here is the summary from RFC 7231, an updated version of the link @Darrel posted:

• HEAD - No defined body semantics.
• GET - No defined body semantics.
• PUT - Body supported.
• POST - Body supported.
• DELETE - No defined body semantics.
• TRACE - Body not supported.
• OPTIONS - Body supported but no semantics on usage (maybe in the future).
• CONNECT - No defined body semantics

As @John also mentioned, all request methods support query strings in the URL (one notable exception might be OPTIONS which only seems to be useful [in my tests] if the URL is HOST/*).

I haven't tested the CONNECT and PATCH methods since I have no interest in them ATM.