RESTful service: PUT or DELETE

Question

When implementing soft row deletion by setting its status to deleted which method is appropriate? Should it be DELETE for we are not passing that row to GET anymore or should it be PUT for we are updating the row's status to deleted?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 27 '14 at 09:10

2

If from the perspective of the user, the resource is not accessible after 'soft deleting' it, (e.g.: you would return a 404), use DELETE. If you can still GET the object after, I don't think I would use DELETE, but PUT may be more appropriate.

answered Aug 27 '14 at 09:10

Evert

93,428
18
118
189

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 27 '14 at 09:10

Marking for deletion should be on the client side, only POST to the server when you do a proper delete.

If you want to contact the server and do another GET in the meantime - you should do the delete at that point. i.e. your GET should get the latest data, meaning the delete should be done before the GET.

RESTful service: PUT or DELETE

2 Answers2