2014-05-08: Support for Various HTTP Methods on the Web
While clearly not all URIs will support all HTTP methods, we wanted to know what methods are widely supported, and how well is the support advertised in HTTP responses. Full range of HTTP method support is crucial for RESTful Web services. Please read our previous blog post for definitions and pointers about REST and HATEOAS. Earlier, we have done a brief analysis of HTTP method support in the HTTP Mailbox paper. We have extended the study to carry out deeper analysis of the same and look at various aspects of it. We initially sampled 100,000 URIs from the DMOZ and found that only 40,870 URIs were live. Our further analysis was based on the response code, "Allow" header, and "Server" header for OPTIONS request from those live URIs. We found that out of those 40,870 URIs: 55.31% do not advertise which methods they support 4.38% refuse the OPTIONS method, either with a 405 or 501 response code 15.33% support only HEAD, GET, and OPTIONS 38.53% support ...