Re^3: REST Webservices

[rhesa]

Thanks for digging deeper. I didn't have a need for PUT or DELETE yet (but I reckon I will in the future), so I hadn't realised the support was this limited.

I agree that a patch to CGI is in order. Even if most web browsers don't support them, PUT and DELETE are still valid HTTP verbs, and I feel that the various CGI modules ought to support them.

At first blush, a patch to either CGI or CGI::Simple doesn't look so difficult. I think DELETE could be handled pretty much the same way as GET, and PUT is pretty similar to POST. I may be overly optimistic, but it shouldn't take more than changing a couple of if()s ;-)

[arbingersys]

As I make this post, CGI is at version 3.48, and it will handle GET|POST|PUT but not DELETE.

I discovered this trying to make a REST dispatch in a .cgi script. I believe you're right -- that DELETE can be handled just like GET. On my system, I made the following change to CGI.pm, and DELETE started to work (I got query string parameters back).

--- /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.0/CGI.pm.bak     2009-11-05 15:26:07.00
+0000000 -0700
+++ /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.0/CGI.pm 2009-11-05 15:23:05.000000000 
+-0700
@@ -649,7 +649,7 @@ sub init {

      # If method is GET or HEAD, fetch the query from
      # the environment.
-      if ($is_xforms || $meth=~/^(GET|HEAD)$/) {
+      if ($is_xforms || $meth=~/^(GET|HEAD|DELETE)$/) {
         if ($MOD_PERL) {
           $query_string = $self->r->args;
         } else {

This is a pretty minor modification, and you get decent functionality out of the DELETE verb (i.e. parameters). I'd love to see at least this much provided by CGI.pm.