GET vs POST for the Beginner
Saturday, January 12th, 2008
If you hunt around for explanations about GET vs POST (used as the method for sending your form data to the server) you get a whole lot of technical overkill because its not a simple discussion. Many people just want a simple answer. Its probably better to say its not an easily explainable discussion when technical experts jump in with quotes from protocol specifications. But what’s the difference between GET and POST to the beginner? How is GET treated differently from POST and why would you use one over the other?
Let’s backtrack a little and look at the form element’s method attribute…
form method="get" action=""
There are other methods but for the most part GET and POST are your two basic alternatives. This is the method that the form will use to send the information to the server. Note the form data will be sent in plain text regardless of whether GET or POST is used.
First let’s look at GET. The simple thing to note about GET is that when you use GET the content of your form will become url encoded into a query string. That means in the address bar of your browser where you type in URLs the content of your form will become a query string appended after a ? as name=value pairs. For example if your form took your name and your age the corresponding query string attached to the URL would be…
?name=steven&age=43
As you can imagine this can be read by anyone looking over your shoulder. In a generalised sense, GET is meant for when you get from the server rather than POST being meant to post to the server.
