Get vs Post http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/the-definitive-guide-to-get-vs-post

According to Wikipedia:


and


So essentially

GET

is used to retrieve remote data, and

POST

is used to insert/update remote data.

HTTP/1.1 specification (RFC 2616) section 9 Method Definitions contains more information on

GET

and

POST

as well as the other HTTP methods, if you are interested.

In addition to explaining the intended uses of each method, the spec also provides at least one practical reason for why

GET

should only be used to retrieve data:



Finally, an important consideration when using

GET

for AJAX requests is that some browsers - IE in particular - will cache the results of a

GET

request. So if you, for example, poll using the same

GET

request you will always get back the same results, even if the data you are querying is being updated server-side. One way to alleviate this problem is to make the URL unique for each request by appending a timestamp.

GET (HTTP) User Rating (546): current rating is3.91/5 1 2 3 4 5	POST (HTTP) User Rating (599): current rating is4.35/5 1 2 3 4 5
History	Parameters remain in browser history because they are part of the URL	Parameters are not saved in browser history.
Bookmarked	Can be bookmarked.	Can not be bookmarked.
BACK button/re-submit behaviour	GET requests are re-executed but may not be re-submitted to server if the HTML is stored in the browser cache.	The browser usually alerts the user that data will need to be re-submitted.
Encoding type (enctype attribute)	application/x-www-form-urlencoded	multipart/form-data or application/x-www-form-urlencoded Use multipart encoding for binary data.
Parameters	can send but the parameter data is limited to what we can stuff into the request line (URL). Safest to use less than 2K of parameters, some servers handle up to 64K	Can send parameters, including uploading files, to the server.
Hacked	Easier to hack for script kiddies	More difficult to hack
Restrictions on form data type	Yes, only ASCII characters allowed.	No restrictions. Binary data is also allowed.
Security	GET is less secure compared to POST because data sent is part of the URL. So it's saved in browser history and server logs in plaintext.	POST is a little safer than GET because the parameters are not stored in browser history or inweb server logs.
Restrictions on form data length	Yes, since form data is in the URL and URL length is restricted. A safe URL length limit is often 2048 characters but varies by browser and web server.	No restrictions
Usability	GET method should not be used when sending passwords or other sensitive information.	POST method used when sending passwords or other sensitive information.
Visibility	GET method is visible to everyone (it will be displayed in the browser's address bar) and has limits on the amount of information to send.	POST method variables are not displayed in the URL.
Cached	Can be cached	Not cached