How to use delete() method in Google App Engine Python's request handler

Question

In GAE Python, I could use

class MyRequestHandler(webapp.RequestHandler):
    def get(self):
        pass #Do Something...
    def post(self):
        pass #Do Something...

To handle GET and POST request. But how can I handle DELETE and PUT? I see delete() and put() in API documentation, but I don't know how to write a form to simulate DELETE and PUT.

I know in Rails, I can use post method with a hidden field in form to simulate the requests like this:

<input type="hidden" name="_method" value="delete" />

and Rails handles the dirty works automatically.

Is there any similar way to do it in GAE python?

I searched this in Google, but no luck.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can use the request method which accepts all the methods like get,post,delete and put. Then you can check it for the request type accordingly.

Check this:

http://gdata-python-client.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/pydocs/gdata.urlfetch.html

<form method="post" action="">
 <input type="hidden" name="_method" value="put" />
 <input type="text" name="name" value="" />
 <input type="submit" value="Save" />
</form> 

def post(self):
    method= self.request.get("_method")
    if method == 'put':
       #call put() function as required

you can go through this as well for the put specification.

http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/tools/webapp/requesthandlerclass.html#RequestHandler_put

Answer 2

The HTML specification doesn't allow a form to use the DELETE method, and you probably can't get a browser to send an HTTP DELETE request with a form. The delete() method of a RequestHandler subclass would generally be used for a RESTful web application with a client that knows how to send DELETE requests, rather than using ordinary HTML forms. (For a browser-based client, you can send DELETE requests in javascript using XMLHttpRequest.)