GET requests about wikitools

[nberger-git]

An updated version of the api.py patch : https://gist.github.com/nberger-git/77f1d8091987eaa19c53
This has a fix to avoid 503 errors in GET mode, provided by @cariaso.

[mzmcbride]

What's the motivation for using GET instead of POST in some cases? I'm not sure the additional code complexity is worth the benefit.

[cariaso]

There are 2 major benefits.

#1. Server performance. GET operations can be cached with Varnish and
similar tools, POST cannot. My site has dramatically more bot traffic than
humans, and this makes a big difference.

This is consistent with RFC1945
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1945#section-8 which explicitly states

Applications must not cache responses to a POST request because the
application has no way of knowing that the server would return an
equivalent response on some future request.

See also http://stackoverflow.com/a/3477374

#2. Logging/Diagnostics. GET params are easily visible in a standard log

184.1.2.3 - - [09/Jun/2016:01:08:31 +0000] "GET
/api.php?inprop=protection%7Csubjectid&format=json&rvprop=content%7Cids%7Cflags%7Ctimestamp%7Cuser%7Ccomment%7Csize&rawcontinue=1&prop=revisions%7Cinfo&titles=Rs62033400&rvlimit=1&action=query
HTTP/1.1" 200 642 "-" "MediaWiki::Gateway/1.1.0"

is much more useful than

113.1.2.3 - - [08/Jun/2016:02:21:28 +0000] "POST /api.php HTTP/1.1" 200 917
"-" "python-wikitools/1.4"

For apache, getting these sorts of details from a POST requires installing
additional modules, and is discouraged except during brief, targeted
debugging.

https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_dumpio.html

One possible implementation is at

cariaso@6b805c9

And I would be happy to make a pull request, or any requested changes.

On Jun 9, 2016 9:21 AM, "MZMcBride" [email protected] wrote:

What's the motivation for using GET instead of POST in some cases? I'm not
sure the additional code complexity is worth the benefit.

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