GET - The client requests a file from the server. If the file
does not exist on the server, the NOT_FOUND (404)
error code is returned to the client. If the request contains an IfModifiedSince
header, the header date is compared with the file date and the file is
sent only if the file date is newer than the header date, otherwise, the
NOT_MODIFIED (304) code is returned. The requested file's properties are
taken from the disk (see class FileProperties
for details) and are passed to the client in the response headers.
For example - if the requested page is not cacheable, the "pragma:
no-cache" header is set in the response.
HEAD - The client requests a file's attributes from the server. The HEAD method is handled in a similar way to the GET method except that the file itself is not sent back to the client (only the relevant headers are sent).
POST - The client requests to post data to the server. The POST request should refer to a runnable url i.e. a cgi-script of a servlet module. The data that is sent to the server is used as the standard input to the url (that differs from the GET method in which the data is sent to the url as command line parameters). The mechanism of creating processes (such as cgi) is not implemented yet, so the POST method should be altered to support this mechanism in the future.
DELETE - The client requests to delete a file from the server. This method will not be normally used by regular clients, such as web browsers, but rather by management applications.