Steven Fling wrote:
> Our application communicates across various application server
> environments via HTTP/HTTPS requests (versus RMI, etc.) and needs to
> pass data/parameters back and forth. Naturally we use SSL to encrypt
> the request/response.
>
> I wanted to see if there were any Best Practices established to
> transfer data in this fashion. POST vs. GET method, querystring vs.
> hidden form variable, etc.

It's good to see so few people answering your question ;-)

The basic answer is that you should use GET when you need the result to
be cached - for example search results that will remain constant for a
certain period of time. And you should use POST when your request
modifies some internal state in your application.

The basic premise behind all of this is the REST application
architecture, which in basic terms is the web we use every day. You can
find lots of details on REST at
http://internet.conveyor.com/RESTwiki/moin.cgi

and two good articles on it on XML.com, at:
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/02/06/rest.html and
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/02/20/rest.html (note that while the
articles are on XML.com, this doesn't mean you have to use XML as your
serialisation format - there are people using REST with form encoding,
and some even using it with MIME encoding).

Matt.

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