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Other requests

The previous sections pretend that there is only one kind of request in HTTP -- the GET request. In fact, there are some others.

The HEAD request method retrieves data about an resource. Polipo does not normally use HEAD, but will fall back to using it for validation it if finds that a given server fails to cooperate with its standard validation methods (see Cache transparency). Polipo will correctly reply to a client's HEAD request.

The POST method is used to request that the server should do something rather than merely sending an entity; it is usually used with HTML forms that have an effect1.

The PUT method is used to replace an resource with a different instance; it is typically used by web publishing applications.

POST and PUT requests are handled pretty much like GET and HEAD; however, for various reasons, some precautions must be taken. In particular, any cached data for the resource they refer to must be discarded, and they can never be pipelined.

Finally, HTTP/1.1 includes a convenient backdoor with the CONNECT method. For more information, please see Tunnelling connections.

Polipo does not currently handle the more exotic methods such as OPTIONS and PROPFIND.


Footnotes

  1. HTML forms should use the GET method when the form has no side-effect as this makes the results cacheable.