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Web and Internet Transport HTTP http query method This specification defines a new HTTP method, QUERY, as a safe, idempotent request method that can carry request content. Discussion of this draft takes place on the HTTP working group mailing list (ietf-http-wg@w3.org), which is archived at . Working Group information can be found at ; source code and issues list for this draft can be found at . The changes in this draft are summarized in .

This specification defines the HTTP QUERY request method as a means of making a safe, idempotent request that contains content. Most often, this is desirable when the data conveyed in a request is too voluminous to be encoded into the request’s URI. For example, this is a common query pattern: GET /feed?q=foo&limit=10&sort=-published HTTP/1.1 Host: example.org However, for a query with parameters that are complex or large, encoding it in the request URI may not be the best option because

• often size limits are not known ahead of time because a request can pass through many uncoordinated systems (but note that recommends senders and recipients to support at least 8000 octets),
• expressing certain kinds of data in the target URI is inefficient because of the overhead of encoding that data into a valid URI, and
• encoding queries directly into the request URI effectively casts every possible combination of query inputs as distinct resources.

As an alternative to using GET, many implementations make use of the HTTP POST method to perform queries, as illustrated in the example below. In this case, the input to the query operation is passed as the request content as opposed to using the request URI’s query component. A typical use of HTTP POST for requesting a query is: POST /feed HTTP/1.1 Host: example.org Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded q=foo&limit=10&sort=-published This variation, however, suffers from the same basic limitation as GET in that it is not readily apparent — absent specific knowledge of the resource and server to which the request is being sent — that a safe, idempotent query is being performed. The QUERY method provides a solution that spans the gap between the use of GET and POST, with the example above being expressed as: QUERY /feed HTTP/1.1 Host: example.org Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded q=foo&limit=10&sort=-published As with POST, the input to the query operation is passed as the content of the request rather than as part of the request URI. Unlike POST, however, the method is explicitly safe and idempotent, allowing functions like caching and automatic retries to operate. Summarizing:

	GET	QUERY	POST
Safe	yes	yes	potentially no
Idempotent	yes	yes	potentially no
Cacheable	yes	yes	yes, but only for future GET or HEAD requests
Content (body)	“no defined semantics”	expected (semantics per target resource)	expected (semantics per target resource)

This document uses terminology defined in . Furthermore, it uses the terms URI query parameter for parameters in the query component of a URI () and query content for the request content () of a QUERY request.

The key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “REQUIRED”, “SHALL”, “SHALL NOT”, “SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, “RECOMMENDED”, “NOT RECOMMENDED”, “MAY”, and “OPTIONAL” in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

The QUERY method is used to initiate a server-side query. Unlike the HTTP GET method, which requests that a server return a representation of the resource identified by the target URI (as defined by ), the QUERY method is used to ask the server to perform a query operation (described by the request content) over some set of data scoped to the target URI. The content returned in response to a QUERY cannot be assumed to be a representation of the resource identified by the target URI. The content of the request and it’s media type define the query. Implementations &MAY; use a request content of any media type with the QUERY method, provided that it has appropriate query semantics. As for all HTTP methods in general, the target URI’s query part takes part in identifying the resource being queried and therefore is not part of the actual query. Whether and how the URI’s query part directly affects the result of the query is implementation specific and out of scope for this specification. QUERY requests are both safe and idempotent with regard to the resource identified by the request URI. That is, QUERY requests do not alter the state of the targeted resource. However, while processing a QUERY request, a server can be expected to allocate computing and memory resources or even create additional HTTP resources through which the response can be retrieved. A successful response to a QUERY request is expected to provide some indication as to the final disposition of the operation. For instance, a successful query that yields no results can be represented by a 204 (No Content) response. If the response includes content, it is expected to describe the results of the operation.

Furthermore, a successful response (2xx, ) can include a Content-Location header field containing an identifier for a resource corresponding to the results of the operation; see for details. This represents a claim from the server that a client can send a GET request for the indicated URI to retrieve the results of the query operation just performed. The indicated resource might be temporary. A server can create or locate a resource that identifies the query operation for future use. If the server does so, the URI of the resource can be included in the Location header field of the 2xx response (see ). This represents a claim that a client can send a GET request to the indicated URI to repeat the query operation just performed without resending the query content. This resource might be temporary; if a future request fails, the client can retry using the original QUERY resource and the previously submitted content.

In some cases, the server may choose to respond indirectly to the QUERY request by redirecting the user agent to a different URI (see ). The semantics of the redirect response do not differ from other methods. For instance, a 303 (See Other) response would indicate that the Location field identifies an alternate URI from which the results can be retrieved using a GET request (this use case is also covered by the use of the Location response field in a 2xx response). On the other hand, response codes 307 (Temporary Redirect) and 308 (Permanent Redirect) can be used to request the user agent to redo the QUERY request on the URI specified by the Location field. Various non-normative examples of successful QUERY responses are illustrated in .

A conditional QUERY requests that the selected representation (i.e., the query results, after any content negotiation) be returned in the response only under the circumstances described by the conditional header field(s), as defined in .

The response to a QUERY method is cacheable; a cache &MAY; use it to satisfy subsequent QUERY requests as per ). The cache key for a query (see ) &MUST; incorporate the request content. When doing so, caches &SHOULD; first normalize request content to remove semantically insignificant differences, thereby improving cache efficiency, by:

• Removing content encoding(s) ().
• Normalizing based upon knowledge of format conventions, as indicated by any media subtype suffix in the request’s Content-Type field (e.g., “+json”, see ).
• Normalizing based upon knowledge of the semantics of the content itself, as indicated by the request’s Content-Type field.

Note that any such normalization is performed solely for the purpose of generating a cache key; it does not change the request itself.

The semantics of Range Requests for QUERY are identical to those for GET, as defined in .

The “Accept-Query” response header field can be used by a resource to directly signal support for the QUERY method while identifying the specific query format media type(s) that may be used. “Accept-Query” contains a list of media ranges () using “Structured Fields” syntax (). Media ranges are represented by a List Structured Header Field of either Tokens or Strings, containing the media range value without parameters. Parameters, if any, are mapped to Parameters of type String. The choice of Token vs. String is semantically insignificant. That is, recipients &MAY; convert Tokens to Strings, but &MUST-NOT; process them differently based on the received type. Media types do not exactly map to Tokens, for instance they allow a leading digit. In cases like these, the String format needs to be used. The only supported uses of wildcards are “*/*”, which matches any type, or “xxxx/*”, which matches any subtype of the indicated type. The order of types listed in the field value is not significant. The only allowed format for parameters is String. Accept-Query’s value applies to every URI on the server that shares the same path; in other words, the query component is ignored. If requests to the same resource return different Accept-Query values, the most recently received fresh value (per ) is used. Example: Accept-Query: “application/jsonpath”, application/sql;charset=”UTF-8″ Although the syntax for this field appears to be similar to other fields, such as “Accept” (), it is a Structured Field and thus &MUST; be processed as specified in .

The QUERY method is subject to the same general security considerations as all HTTP methods as described in . It can be used as an alternative to passing request information in the URI (e.g., in the query component). This is preferred in some cases, as the URI is more likely to be logged or otherwise processed by intermediaries than the request content. If a server creates a temporary resource to represent the results of a QUERY request (e.g., for use in the Location or Content-Location field) and the request contains sensitive information that cannot be logged, then the URI of this resource &SHOULD; be chosen such that it does not include any sensitive portions of the original request content. Caches that normalize QUERY content incorrectly or in ways that are significantly different from how the resource processes the content can return the incorrect response if normalization results in a false positive. A QUERY request from user agents implementing CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) will require a “preflight” request, as QUERY does not belong to the set of CORS-safelisted methods (see “Methods” in ).

IANA is requested to add the QUERY method to the HTTP Method Registry at (see ).

Method Name	Safe	Idempotent	Specification
QUERY	Yes	Yes

IANA is requested to add the Accept-Query field to the HTTP Field Name Registry at (see ).

Field Name	Status	Structured Type	Reference	Comments
Accept-Query	permanent	List	of this document.

Cloudflare The Varnish Cache Project WHATWG WHATWG Latest version available at .

The examples below are for illustrative purposes only; if one needs to send queries that are actually this short, it is probably better to use GET. The media type used in most examples is “application/x-www-form-urlencoded” (as used in POST requests from browser user clients, defined in “application/x-www-form-urlencoded” in ). The Content-Length fields have been omitted for brevity.

A simple query with a direct response: QUERY /contacts HTTP/1.1 Host: example.org Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded Accept: application/json select=surname,givenname,email&limit=10&match=%22email=*@example.*%22 Response: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: application/json [ { “surname”: “Smith”, “givenname”: “John”, “email”: “smith@example.org” }, { “surname”: “Jones”, “givenname”: “Sally”, “email”: “sally.jones@example.com” }, { “surname”: “Dubois”, “givenname”: “Camille”, “email”: “camille.dubois@example.net” } ]

A simple way to discover support for QUERY is provided by the OPTIONS () method: OPTIONS /contacts HTTP/1.1 Host: example.org Response: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Allow: GET, QUERY, OPTIONS, HEAD The Allow response field () denotes the set of supported methods on the specified resource. There are alternatives to the use of OPTIONS. For instance, a QUERY request can be tried without prior knowledge of server support. The server would then either process the request, or could respond with a 4xx status such as 405 (Method Not Allowed, ), including the Allow response field.

Discovery of supported media types for QUERY is possible via the Accept-Query () response field: HEAD /contacts HTTP/1.1 Host: example.org Response: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: application/xhtml Accept-Query: application/x-www-form-urlencoded, application/sql Responses to which request methods will contain Accept-Query will depend on the resource being accessed. An alternative to checking Accept-Query would be to make a QUERY request, and then — in case of a 4xx status such as 415 (Unsupported Media Type, ) response — to inspect the Allow () response field: HTTP/1.1 415 Unsupported Media Type Content-Type: application/xhtml Accept: application/x-www-form-urlencoded, application/sql

The Content-Location and Location response fields in success responses (2xx, ) provide a way to identify alternate resources that will respond to GET requests, either for the received result of the request, or for future requests to perform the same operation. Going back to the example from : QUERY /contacts HTTP/1.1 Host: example.org Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded Accept: application/json select=surname,givenname,email&limit=10&match=%22email=*@example.*%22 Response: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: application/json Content-Location: /contacts/stored-results/17 Location: /contacts/stored-queries/42 Last-Modified: Sat, 25 Aug 2012 23:34:45 GMT Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2024, 16:10:24 GMT [ { “surname”: “Smith”, “givenname”: “John”, “email”: “smith@example.org” }, { “surname”: “Jones”, “givenname”: “Sally”, “email”: “sally.jones@example.com” }, { “surname”: “Dubois”, “givenname”: “Camille”, “email”: “camille.dubois@example.net” } ]

The Content-Location response field received above identifies a resource holding the result for the QUERY response it appeared on: GET /contacts/stored-results/17 HTTP/1.1 Host: example.org Accept: application/json Response: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Last-Modified: Sat, 25 Aug 2012 23:34:45 GMT Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2024, 16:10:25 GMT [ { “surname”: “Smith”, “givenname”: “John”, “email”: “smith@example.org” }, { “surname”: “Jones”, “givenname”: “Sally”, “email”: “sally.jones@example.com” }, { “surname”: “Dubois”, “givenname”: “Camille”, “email”: “camille.dubois@example.net” } ]

The Location response field identifies a resource that will respond to GET with a fresh result for the QUERY response it appeared on. GET /contacts/stored-queries/42 HTTP/1.1 Host: example.org Accept: application/json In this example, one entry was removed at 2024-11-17T16:12:01Z (as indicated in the Last-Modified field), so the response only contains two entries: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: application/json Last-Modified: Sun, 17 November 2024, 16:12:01 GMT ETag: “42-1” Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2024, 16:13:17 GMT [ { “surname”: “Smith”, “givenname”: “John”, “email”: “smith@example.org” }, { “surname”: “Dubois”, “givenname”: “Camille”, “email”: “camille.dubois@example.net” } ] Assuming no change in the query result, a subsequent conditional GET request with If-None-Match: “42-1” would result in a 304 response (Not Modified, ). Note that there’s no guarantee that the server will implement this resource indefinitely, so, after an error response, the client would need to redo the original QUERY request in order to obtain a new alternative location.

Servers can send “indirect” responses using the status code 303 (See Other, ). Given the request at the beginning of , a server might respond with: HTTP/1.1 303 See Other Content-Type: text/plain Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2024, 16:13:17 GMT Location: /contacts/stored-queries/42 See stored query at “/contacts/stored-queries/42”. This is similar to including Location on a direct response, except that no result for the query is returned. This allows the server to only generate an alternative resource. This resource could then be used as shown in .

The following examples show requests on a JSON-shaped () database of RFC errata. The request below uses XSLT () to extract errata information summarized per year and the defined errata types. QUERY /errata.json HTTP/1.1 Host: example.org Content-Type: application/xslt+xml Accept: application/xml, text/csv

errata_status_code submit_date ]]>

Response: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: text/csv Accept-Query: “application/jsonpath”, “application/xslt+xml” Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2025, 17:10:01 GMT year, total, rejected, verified, hdu, reported 2000, 14, 0, 14, 0, 0 2001, 72, 1, 70, 1, 0 2002, 124, 8, 104, 12, 0 2003, 63, 0, 61, 2, 0 2004, 89, 1, 83, 5, 0 2005, 156, 10, 96, 50, 0 2006, 444, 54, 176, 214, 0 2007, 429, 48, 188, 193, 0 2008, 423, 52, 165, 206, 0 2009, 331, 39, 148, 144, 0 2010, 538, 80, 232, 222, 4 2011, 367, 47, 170, 150, 0 2012, 348, 54, 149, 145, 0 2013, 341, 61, 169, 106, 5 2014, 342, 73, 180, 72, 17 2015, 343, 79, 145, 89, 30 2016, 295, 46, 122, 82, 45 2017, 303, 46, 120, 84, 53 2018, 350, 61, 118, 98, 73 2019, 335, 47, 131, 94, 63 2020, 387, 68, 117, 123, 79 2021, 321, 44, 148, 63, 66 2022, 358, 37, 198, 40, 83 2023, 262, 38, 121, 33, 70 2024, 322, 33, 125, 23, 141 9999, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0 Note the Accept-Query response field indicating that another query format — JSONPath () — is supported as well. The request below would report the identifiers of all rejected errata submitted since 2024: QUERY /errata.json HTTP/1.1 Host: example.org Content-Type: application/jsonpath Accept: application/json $..[ ?@.errata_status_code==”Rejected” && @.submit_date>”2024″ ] [“doc-id”] Response: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: application/json Accept-Query: “application/jsonpath”, “application/xslt+xml” Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2025, 09:55:42 GMT Last-Modified: Thu, 20 Feb 2025 06:10:01 GMT [ “RFC1185″,”RFC8407″,”RFC6350″,”RFC8467″,”RFC1157″,”RFC9543”, “RFC9076″,”RFC7656″,”RFC2822″,”RFC9460″,”RFC2104″,”RFC6797”, “RFC9499″,”RFC9557″,”RFC2131″,”RFC2328″,”RFC9001″,”RFC3325”, “RFC9438″,”RFC2526″,”RFC2985″,”RFC7643″,”RFC9132″,”RFC6376”, “RFC9110″,”RFC9460″,”RFC7748″,”RFC9497″,”RFC8463″,”RFC4035”, “RFC7239″,”RFC9083″,”RFC9537″,”RFC9537″,”RFC9420″,”RFC9000”, “RFC9656″,”RFC9110″,”RFC2324″,”RFC2549″,”RFC6797″,”RFC2549”, “RFC8894” ]

• Use “example/query” media type instead of undefined “text/query” ()
• In , adjust the grammar to just define the field value ()
• Update to latest HTTP core spec, and adjust terminology accordingly ()
• Reference RFC 8174 and markup bcp14 terms ()
• Update HTTP reference ()
• Relax restriction of generic XML media type in request content ()

• Add minimal description of cacheability ()
• Use “QUERY” as method name ()
• Update HTTP reference ()

• In , slightly rephrase statement about significance of ordering ()
• Throughout: use “content” instead of “payload” or “body” ()
• Updated references ()

• In , clarify scope ()

• Describe role of Content-Location and Location fields ()
• Added Mike Bishop as author ()
• Use “target URI” instead of “effective request URI” ()

• Updated language and examples about redirects and method rewriting ()
• Add QUERY example to introduction ()
• Update “Sensitive information in QUERY URLs” ()
• Field registration for “Accept-Query” ()

• Improve language about sensitive information in URIs ()
• Guidance about what’s possible with GET wrt URI length ()
• Clarified description of conditional queries ()
• Editorial changes to Introduction (ack Will Hawkins, )
• Added Security Consideration with respect to Normalization ()
• Added CORS considerations ()
• Make Accept-Query a Structured Field ()
• SQL media type is application/sql (RFC6922) ()
• Added overview table to introduction ()
• Reference HTTP spec for terminology ()
• Moved BCP14 related text into subsection ()
• Move examples into index ()

• Examples Section revised ()
• Discuss Range Requests ()

• Mention the role of the query part of the request URI ()
• Avoid term ‘query parameters’ ()
• Add missing references, fixed terminology ()
• Add Acknowledgements/Contributors sections; moved Ashok to Contributors ()
• Hopefully more clarity wrt query content vs URI query component ()

• Clarify cacheability of POST ()
• Rephrase text that suggests a media type definition can override URI semantics ()
• Restrict description of Content-Location and Location semantics to 2xx responses ()
• Slightly rephrase semantics for Content-Location ()

We thank all members of the HTTP Working Group for ideas, reviews, and feedback. The following individuals deserve special recognition: Carsten Bormann, Mark Nottingham, Martin Thomson, Michael Thornburgh, Roberto Polli, Roy Fielding, and Will Hawkins.

Ashok Malhotra participated in early discussions leading to this specification:

malhotrasahib@gmail.com