[whatwg] A thought: <a href="..." method="post">

[Mikko Rantalainen]

James Graham wrote:
> Kornel Lesinski wrote:
>>On Wed, 11 May 2005 11:28:25 +0100, Mark Wubben <markwubben at gmail.com>  
>>wrote:
>>>
>>>    <a href="/delete/$id/confirm" action="/delete/$id"  
>>>method="post">delete</a>
>>
>>That it doesn't look like data to send using POST method.
>>I'm afraid that in most cases it will be used as:
>>
>><a href="#" action="/delete/$id" method="post">delete</a>
> 
> Wouldn't it work if a single URL in the the href attribute was used for 
> both request types? i.e. simply
> <a href="/delete/$id" method="post">delete</a>
> The serverside application would be expected to deal with GET requests 
> on the URI in a sane way e.g. returning a confirmation page with a 
> POSTable form on it

+1

Server can figure out if the request has been made with GET or POST 
and it can behave correctly using to that information.

During transition phase scripting can be used to POST the delete 
operation or scripting could be used to add something to the GET 
request (like "?jsconfirmdone=1"). Details doesn't matter here as 
we're talking about workarounds that make the thing work without the 
confirmation page in UAs that don't support this new attribute 
"method". Default fallback behavior would be to use confirmation 
page generated by the server.

Broken server apps will be still broken and there's nothing we can 
write in the spec that forces every developer to create perfect 
applications.

-- 
Mikko