Why does including an action verb in the URI in a REST implementation violate the protocol?

Question

I\'m finding it necessary to understand why including action verbs in the URI violates the REST protocol for URI syntax? When I read the following article, I sense that too

Answer 1

REST isn't a protocol, rather a style. As such you are free to do anything that meets your requirements.

HTTP verbs are preferred if possible, as they are part of the HTTP protocol and as such a standard. It also allows you to use existing security and caching layers on a standard web server, without having to write any bespoke middleware.

REST suggests that we should embrace HTTP, and not add layers of abstraction like SOAP, RPC, or CORBA do. Adding additional verbs, or adding them to the URL could be seen as an, albeit lightweight, abstraction.

However as you righly mention these are not consistently supported accross browsers, or some versions of Flash. Therefore it may be necessary to put them in the URL in the real world, if you are accesssing from the client side.

You should look at this carefully though as there may be serious security issues when performing DELETE/PUT over a URL.

I would suggest that the verbs GET POST PUT and DELETE are suitable for virtually any need. You should not need any new verbs or response codes, as these are intended to be generic. Add further information in the request and response data.

Check out this SO article for more info: Understanding REST: Verbs, error codes, and authentication