Use HTTP POST Method

[00:00] The HTTP post method is used to perform resource-specific processing of requests. This means it can actually be used in a variety of ways. Let's take a look at the first example, where post can be used to create a new resource. We'll be creating a new GitHub issue using the GitHub API.

[00:17] Here, we can see our post request has included a message body and a content type to indicate what is included in our request. This is optional with post requests, and some post requests may not have any message body at all.

[00:36] We can see that the GitHub server has responded with a 201 status code, indicating it has successfully created our new issue, and it's indicated the location of that issue, as well as returning a representation of that issue in the response. Post can also be used for other generic request processing. As an example, let's update the assignees of our created GitHub issue.

[01:10] Again, we have a request body indicating the assignees we would like to add to our issue. We can see that yet again, the GitHub API has responded with a 200 family status code, as well a location header indicating where our issue is that has been updated. We can also see that the issue itself has been updated to include a new assignee.

[01:29] Post requests are not idempotent. We can imagine that our initial request to create our issue, if retried several times, would end up creating multiple duplicate GitHub issues.

[01:39] To summarize, HTTP post is used to request resource-specific processing of our request. That can be used to create new resources, or to update or make modifications to existing ones, or request other generic processing.