Do SOAP and REST put their respective payloads as a URL? For example:
http://localhost/action/?var=datadatadata
I know SOAP uses XML and sometimes runs on a different port on the server, but do you still submit data like the example above or do you send it as one big XML encapsulated packet to that port?
It depends on your HTTP method. GET method will put everything into URL while POST method only put path information in URL and the rest of them are streamed into the HTTP request body.
SOAP should also rely on HTTP protocol and hence should follow the same rule. Check out http://www.w3.org/TR/soap12-part0/#L10309
Related
I have read many discussions on this, such as the fact the PUT is idempotent and POST is not, etc. However, doesn't this ultimately depend on how the server is implemented? A developer can always build the backend server such that the PUT request is not idempotent and creates multiple records for multiple requests. A developer can also build an endpoint for a PUT request such that it acts like a DELETE request and deletes a record in the database.
So my question is, considering that we don't take into account any server side code, is there any real difference between the HTTP methods? For example, GET and POST have real differences in that you can't send a body using a GET request, but you can send a body using a POST request. Also, from my understanding, GET requests are usually cached by default in most browsers.
Are HTTP request methods anything more than just a logical structure (semantics) so that as developers we can "expect" a certain behavior based on the type of HTTP request we send?
You are right that most of the differences are on the semantic level, and if your components decide to assign other semantics, this will work as well. Unless there are components involved that you do not control (libraries, proxies, load balancers, etc).
For instance, some component might take advantage of the fact that PUT it idempotent and thus can re retried, while POST is not.
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is designed to enable communications between clients and servers.
HTTP works as a request-response protocol between a client and server.
A web browser may be the client, and an application on a computer that hosts a web site may be the server.
Example: A client (browser) submits an HTTP request to the server; then the server returns a response to the client. The response contains status information about the request and may also contain the requested content.
HTTP Methods
GET
POST
PUT
HEAD
DELETE
PATCH
OPTIONS
The GET Method
GET is used to request data from a specified resource.
GET is one of the most common HTTP methods.
Note that the query string (name/value pairs) is sent in the URL of a GET request.
The POST Method
POST is used to send data to a server to create/update a resource.
The data sent to the server with POST is stored in the request body of the HTTP request.
POST is one of the most common HTTP methods.
The PUT Method
PUT is used to send data to a server to create/update a resource.
The difference between POST and PUT is that PUT requests are idempotent. That is, calling the same PUT request multiple times will always produce the same result. In contrast, calling a POST request repeatedly have side effects of creating the same resource multiple times.
The HEAD Method
HEAD is almost identical to GET, but without the response body.
In other words, if GET /users returns a list of users, then HEAD /users will make the same request but will not return the list of users.
HEAD requests are useful for checking what a GET request will return before actually making a GET request - like before downloading a large file or response body.
The DELETE Method
The DELETE method deletes the specified resource.
The OPTIONS Method
The OPTIONS method describes the communication options for the target resource.
src. w3schools
I tried to reproduce a bunch of SOAP requests sent by an .exe file in Postman but the API end point does not send back the correct result.
I constructed a request exactly like the one captured with Wireshark, but the response is not correct.
What seems to be the problem? What am I missing?
Update:
I just tried to send these request using SoapUI instead of Postman and with SoapUI the response is a SOAP response so it seems more correct, the endpoint still doesn't send back correct result, but at least the response is a SOAP response now.
Apparently Postman messes up the SOAP request in some way.
Solution:
I created a soap service with SoapUI and used the wsdl.xml file provided by the web service
SoapUI automatically generated all operations/requests defined in the wsdl.xml
I sent these auto generated requests made by SoapUI and they worked.
So I compared these requests with the ones I was sending and realized the syntax (xml body of the request) of these auto generated requests was different than the ones described in the web service doc.
but there are still some weird things that I don't understand, like the requests I captured with Wireshark had the same xml body as in the Doc described but they were successful responses.
I have proprietary http based API to test from JMeter. Unfortunately some of the endpoints of the API are expecting http DELETE method with a request body (I know its questionable API design to use DELETE with request body, but I have no ability to change that API and need to test it).
How can I test it from JMeter? It seems that standard HttpRequest sampler silently ignores my body payload without any warnings. (When I try it in POSTMAN its sending a request body for DELETE method)
I did find an old JMeter plugin called HTTP Raw Request that somewhat helps but still doesn't auto-calculate "Content-Length:" http header for my body payload...so I have to do it manually for every test case - which is a pain for dynamically generated data payloads.
So my question still remains: How can I test HTTP DELETE with request body from JMeter?
Here is the screenshot:
NOTE1: Starting from jMeter ver. 3.1 (see bugzilla #60358) it was fixed for Http GET request to be able to send body in the request...but DELETE was not added.
NOTE2: See bugzilla #61443 for the DELETE request with body.
NOTE3: I'm using client implementation called "Java".
As per reference docs:
http://jmeter.apache.org/usermanual/component_reference.html#HTTP_Request
There are 2 implementations for http request sampler. The non default one called "Java" has this issue with not passing DELETE request body.
Luckily the default implementation called "HttpClient4" that correctly passes request payload for DELETE operation as per JMeter data entry screen.
To change implementations for http request sampler you have to go to "advanced" tab of the HTTP Request Sampler and select client implementation "HttpClient4" instead of "Java". Here is the screenshot:
After that when executed it correctly sends request payload for DELETE operation. Here is the screenshot:
In how many ways can an HTTP request be generated?
There are endless ways how you can create and from where you can send HTTP requests to a server. Actually your server has no idea, what the origin of such a request is (if it's AJAX or "regular" request, or sent from a console application or ...)
But there are HTTP methods (HTTP verbs) that (can) tell the server about the intent of the request: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Verbs#Request_methods
Also you can set headers in a request, for example the content-type or the accepted encoding: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_header_fields
Most JavaScript libraries for example set the (non-standard) HTTP header X-Requested-With, so your application can differentiate between regular and ajax requests.
You see, it's even possible to set your own, non-standard headers. There are endless possible combinations...
HttpRequest is a C# class that wraps a petition sent by a client during a Web request.
There are many ways to generate it. The most usual one happens when your browser connects to an ASP.NET website.
You can, for example, create your own custom HttpRequest to petition a specific web page from a C# console application.
Are you trying to achieve something more specific?
I am setting up a back end API in a script of mine that contacts one of my sites by sending XML to my web server in the form of POST data. This script will be used by many and I want to limit the bandwidth waste for people that accidentally turn the feature on without a proper access key.
I will be denying requests that do not have the correct access key by maybe generating a 403 access code.
Lets say the POST data is ~500kb of data. Does the server receive all 500kb of data when this attempt is made regardless of the status code?
How about if I made the url contain the key mydomain/api/123456789 and generate 403 status on all bad access keys.
Does the POST data still get sent/received regardless or is it negotiated before the data is finally sent.
Thanks in advance!
Generally speaking, the entire request will be sent, including post data. There is often no way for the application layer to return a response like a 403 until it has received the entire request.
In reality, it will depend on the language/framework used and how closely it is linked to the HTTP server. Section 8.2.2 of RFC2616 HTTP/1.1 specification has this to say
An HTTP/1.1 (or later) client sending
a message-body SHOULD monitor the
network connection for an error status
while it is transmitting the request.
If the client sees an error status, it
SHOULD immediately cease transmitting
the body. If the body is being sent
using a "chunked" encoding (section
3.6), a zero length chunk and empty trailer MAY be used to prematurely
mark the end of the message. If the
body was preceded by a Content-Length
header, the client MUST close the
connection.
So, if you can find a language environemnt closely linked with the HTTP server (for example, mod_perl), you could do this in a way which does comply with standards.
An alternative approach you could take is to make an initial, smaller request to obtain a URL to use for the larger POST. The application can then deny providing the URL to clients without an appropriate key.
Here is great book about RESTful Web Services, where it's explained how HTTP works: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596529260
You can consider any request as envelope, where on top of it it's written address (URL), some properties (HTTP Headers) and inside it there's some data (if request is initiated by post method). So as you might guess you can't receive envelope partially.
Oh I forgot, it's when you are using HTTP Post with standard HTTP header "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" but if you are uploading files (correspondingly using ""multipart/form-data") Django gives you control over streamed chunks of files using Middleware classes: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/middleware/