How does Laravel handle PUT requests from browsers?

Question

I know browsers only support POST and GET requests, and Laravel supports PUT requests using the following code:

<?= Form::open('/path/', 'PUT'); ?>
    ... form stuff ...
<?= Form::close(); ?>

This produces the following HTML

<form method="POST" action="http://example.com/home/" accept-charset="UTF-8">
    <input type="hidden" name="_method" value="PUT" />
    ... form stuff ...
</form>

How does the framework handle this? Does it capture the POST request before deciding which route to send the request off to? Does it use ajax to send an actual PUT to the framework?

Answer 1

It inserts a hidden field, and that field mentions it is a PUT or DELETE request

See here:

echo Form::open('user/profile', 'PUT');

results in:

<input type="hidden" name="_method" value="PUT">

Then it looks for _method when routing in the request.php core file (look for 'spoofing' in the code) - and if it detects it - will use that value to route to the correct restful controller.

It is still using "POST" to achieve this. There is no ajax used.

Answer 2

Laravel uses the symfony Http Foundation which checks for this _method variable and changes the request to either PUT or DELETE based on its contents. Yes, this happens before routing takes place.