$http.post() method is actally sending a GET

Question

NOTE:

I've found a possibly related issue that warrants a new question here

---

This is a weird problem. I've been using angular over the course of 2 years and have never run into this problem.

I'm using angular v1.5.0. I'm making a post request like this:

$http({
    method: "POST",
    url: "/myurl",
    data: {
        file: myFile // This is just an object
    }
});

Run-of-the-mill POST request right? Get this. I look in the console and the Network tab logs the request as a GET. Bizarre. So I've jiggered the code to work like this:

$http.post("/myurl", {file: myFile});

Same thing. After stepping through the $http service code I'm confident that the headers are being set properly. Has anyone else run into this problem?

Update

Taking germanio's advice, i've tried using the $resource service instead:

promise = $resource("/upload").save()

(this returns an error for another reason, it still executes the POST properly). I'm having the same problem: the request is logged as a GET in the console.

Here are the headers of the request when it gets to my server:

GET /myurl/ HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8001
Accept: application/json, text/plain, */*
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, sdch
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8
Cache-Control: no-cache
Connection: keep-alive
Pragma: no-cache
Referer: http://localhost:8001/myurl/
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_4) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.87 Safari/537.36

Update 2

As per georgeawg's suggestion I've used an interceptor to log the request at its various stages. Here is the interceptor code:

$httpProvider.interceptors.push(function() {
    return {
        request: function(config) {
            console.log(config);
            return config;
        }
    }
}

Having run this code I get this logged:

data:Object // contains file object
headers: Object // has Content-Type set to multipart
method:"POST" // ???
url :"/myurl

So this means the request is being sent as a POST from within Angular, but it is still logged as a GET both in the browser and on my server. I think there is something low level at work here about the HTTP protocol that I dont understand.

Is the request sent to the server before it is actually logged in the browser? If so, that might atleast point to my server as the culprit.

In the hopes of finding out whats going on, here is my server code:

type FormStruct struct {
    Test string
}

func PHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    var t FormStruct

    req, _ := httputil.DumpRequest(r, true)

    log.Println(string(req))
    log.Println(r.Method) // GET
    log.Println(r.Body)

    decoder := json.NewDecoder(r.Body)
    err := decoder.Decode(&t)
    log.Println("Decoding complete")
    if err != nil {
        log.Println("Error")
        panic(err.Error()+"\n\n")
    }
    log.Println(t.Test)

    w.Write([]byte("Upload complete, no errors"))
}

func main() {
    http.HandleFunc("/myurl/", PHandler)    
    fmt.Println("Go Server listening on port 8001")
    http.ListenAndServe(":8001", nil)
}

My server throws an EOF error when it receives the request:

2016/03/30 10:51:37 http: panic serving [::1]:52039: EOF

Not sure what an EOF would even mean in this context.

Update 3

By the suggestion of another use, I tried using POSTMAN to hit my server with a fake POST request. The server receives the request properly. This means to me that there is something up with how angular is making the POST request. Please help.

Any ideas?

Full server logs:

Go Server listening on port 8001

2016/03/30 11:13:08 GET /myurl/ HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8001
Accept: */*
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, sdch
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8
Cache-Control: no-cache
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Type: application/json
Postman-Token: 33d3de90-907e-4350-c703-6c57a4ce4ac0
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_4) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.87 Safari/537.36
X-Xsrf-Token: null


2016/03/30 11:13:08 GET
2016/03/30 11:13:08 {}
2016/03/30 11:13:08 Decoding complete
2016/03/30 11:13:08 Error
2016/03/30 11:13:08 http: panic serving [::1]:52228: EOF


goroutine 5 [running]:
net/http.(*conn).serve.func1(0xc820016180)
    /usr/local/Cellar/go/1.6/libexec/src/net/http/server.go:1389 +0xc1
panic(0x3168c0, 0xc82000b1a0)
    /usr/local/Cellar/go/1.6/libexec/src/runtime/panic.go:426 +0x4e9
routes.FUPHandler(0x1055870, 0xc820061ee0, 0xc820104000)
    /Users/projectpath/routes.go:42 +0x695
net/http.HandlerFunc.ServeHTTP(0x4e7e20, 0x1055870, 0xc820061ee0, 0xc820104000)
    /usr/local/Cellar/go/1.6/libexec/src/net/http/server.go:1618 +0x3a
net/http.(*ServeMux).ServeHTTP(0xc820014b40, 0x1055870, 0xc820061ee0, 0xc820104000)
    /usr/local/Cellar/go/1.6/libexec/src/net/http/server.go:1910 +0x17d
net/http.serverHandler.ServeHTTP(0xc820016100, 0x1055870, 0xc820061ee0, 0xc820104000)
    /usr/local/Cellar/go/1.6/libexec/src/net/http/server.go:2081 +0x19e
net/http.(*conn).serve(0xc820016180)
    /usr/local/Cellar/go/1.6/libexec/src/net/http/server.go:1472 +0xf2e
created by net/http.(*Server).Serve
    /usr/local/Cellar/go/1.6/libexec/src/net/http/server.go:2137 +0x44e

Update 4

I stumbled onto something interesting:

Charles logs a POST request when I post to myurl, but the response status is 301. After the POST a GET is logged. This is the GET that is hitting my server.

My server, as you can see above, does not do any sort of redirection. How is the 301 happening?

Answer 1

This is due to a security consideration.

In your situation when a redirect is sent back from the server to the browser, the browser will not repeat the POST request (but rather just a "simple" GET request).

Generally speaking a browser will not send POST data to a redirect URL because the browser is not qualified to decide if you're willing to send the same data to the new URL what you intended to send to the original URL (think about passwords, credit card numbers and other sensitive data). But don't try to circumvent it, simply use registered path of your handler to POST to, or any of the other tips mentioned in the linked answer.

For context see question:

Go web server is automatically redirecting POST requests

You can read more on the subject here:

Why doesn't HTTP have POST redirect?