SEARCH method

[asbjornu]

As requested by @reschke in httpwg/http-core#250, I'm creating an issue for the specification of the SEARCH method as an alternative to POST, making search requests safe, idempotent and cacheable.

As discussed in the HTTP Workshop in May, GET requests with a body is in use by large vendors such as Elasticsearch (see elastic/elasticsearch#16024) and their interpretation of the spec being that this is "just fine" (see elastic/elasticsearch-php#737 (comment)). Language is hopefully being added to the spec that makes this not seem "just fine" anymore, but I think we also need to provide a solution to the specific problem of not wanting to jam JSON into a URL to be able to use the GET keyword.

While POST with the header defined in #942 would help, POST is still an unsafe method that poorly reflects the safe, idempotent semantics of search-like operations. I therefore argue that a a SEARCH method is needed to have a safe, idempotent method with explicit caching support, in opposition to POST which explicitly is not cacheable.

The current draft for SEARCH is written by @jasnell, but I hope he would be willing to hand over the spec to someone else.

[MikeBishop]

I'm not sure that an issue is the right way to track this, because this would be a substantial new addition to a draft that's not actually supposed to define anything new. I would think the right venue for this is reviving the draft and/or writing a new one that succeeds it, then taking it to the working group for potential adoption.

[jasnell]

Absolutely willing to hand it over! Would love to see this move forward, just don't have any time to move it forward myself.

[asbjornu]

@MikeBishop, this issue got a reply from both you and @jasnell, so I'd say its creation is an absolute success so far! 🎉 😄 I agree it needs proper stewardship, though, so now that James has agreed to hand it over, we "just" need someone who knows how to write an I-D to take it and to do exactly as you suggest and revive/rewrite the draft.

[mitar]

I think SEARCH is to specific. What about FETCH or RETRIEVE?

[mnot]

See httpwg/admin#2.