Which HTTP methods match up to which CRUD methods?

http rest crud http-method
Drew picture Drew · Jun 1, 2011 · Viewed 123.1k times · Source

In RESTful style programming, we should use HTTP methods as our building blocks. I'm a little confused though which methods match up to the classic CRUD methods. GET/Read and DELETE/Delete are obvious enough.

However, what is the difference between PUT/POST? Do they match one to one with Create and Update?

Answer

Paul Morgan picture Paul Morgan · Jun 2, 2011 
Create = PUT with a new URI
         POST to a base URI returning a newly created URI
Read   = GET
Update = PUT with an existing URI
Delete = DELETE

PUT can map to both Create and Update depending on the existence of the URI used with the PUT.

POST maps to Create.

Correction: POST can also map to Update although it's typically used for Create. POST can also be a partial update so we don't need the proposed PATCH method.

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