<p>"There are two noncontroversial uses for overloaded POST. The first is to <em>simulate</em> HTTP's uniform interface for clients like web browsers that don't support PUT or DELETE"</p>
<p>—<ahref="https://www.amazon.com/RESTful-Web-Services-Leonard-Richardson/dp/0596529260">RESTful Web Services</a>, Leonard Richardson & Sam Ruby.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In order to allow the browsable API to function, there are a couple of browser enhancements that REST framework needs to provide.</p>
<p>As of version 3.3.0 onwards these are enabled with javascript, using the <ahref="https://github.com/tomchristie/ajax-form">ajax-form</a> library.</p>
<h2id="browser-based-put-delete-etc"><aclass="toclink"href="#browser-based-put-delete-etc">Browser based PUT, DELETE, etc...</a></h2>
<p>The <ahref="https://github.com/tomchristie/ajax-form">AJAX form library</a> supports browser-based <code>PUT</code>, <code>DELETE</code> and other methods on HTML forms.</p>
<p>After including the library, use the <code>data-method</code> attribute on the form, like so:</p>
<p>Note that prior to 3.3.0, this support was server-side rather than javascript based. The method overloading style (as used in <ahref="https://guides.rubyonrails.org/form_helpers.html#how-do-forms-with-put-or-delete-methods-work">Ruby on Rails</a>) is no longer supported due to subtle issues that it introduces in request parsing.</p>
<h2id="browser-based-submission-of-non-form-content"><aclass="toclink"href="#browser-based-submission-of-non-form-content">Browser based submission of non-form content</a></h2>
<p>Browser-based submission of content types such as JSON are supported by the <ahref="https://github.com/tomchristie/ajax-form">AJAX form library</a>, using form fields with <code>data-override='content-type'</code> and <code>data-override='content'</code> attributes.</p>
<p>Note that prior to 3.3.0, this support was server-side rather than javascript based.</p>
<h2id="url-based-format-suffixes"><aclass="toclink"href="#url-based-format-suffixes">URL based format suffixes</a></h2>
<p>REST framework can take <code>?format=json</code> style URL parameters, which can be a
useful shortcut for determining which content type should be returned from
the view.</p>
<p>This behavior is controlled using the <code>URL_FORMAT_OVERRIDE</code> setting.</p>
<h2id="http-header-based-method-overriding"><aclass="toclink"href="#http-header-based-method-overriding">HTTP header based method overriding</a></h2>
<p>Prior to version 3.3.0 the semi extension header <code>X-HTTP-Method-Override</code> was supported for overriding the request method. This behavior is no longer in core, but can be adding if needed using middleware.</p>
<h2id="url-based-accept-headers"><aclass="toclink"href="#url-based-accept-headers">URL based accept headers</a></h2>
<p>Until version 3.3.0 REST framework included built-in support for <code>?accept=application/json</code> style URL parameters, which would allow the <code>Accept</code> header to be overridden.</p>
<p>Since the introduction of the content negotiation API this behavior is no longer included in core, but may be added using a custom content negotiation class, if needed.</p>
return [token.strip() for token in header.split(',')]
</code></pre>
<h2id="doesnt-html5-support-put-and-delete-forms"><aclass="toclink"href="#doesnt-html5-support-put-and-delete-forms">Doesn't HTML5 support PUT and DELETE forms?</a></h2>
<p>Nope. It was at one point intended to support <code>PUT</code> and <code>DELETE</code> forms, but
was later <ahref="https://www.w3.org/TR/html5-diff/#changes-2010-06-24">dropped from the spec</a>. There remains
<ahref="http://amundsen.com/examples/put-delete-forms/">ongoing discussion</a> about adding support for <code>PUT</code> and <code>DELETE</code>,
as well as how to support content types other than form-encoded data.</p>
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