Serving non-standard HTTP method with ExpressJS

Question

I would like to write an HTTP server that answer to request using a non-standard HTTP method (verb). For instance, the client would make a request like FOO / HTTP/.1.1. And on the server side, this request would be handled by something like:

var express = require('express');

var app = express.createServer();

app.configure(function(){
  app.use(express.logger({ format: ':method :url' }));
  app.use(express.methodOverride());
});

app.foo('/', function(req, res){
    res.send('Hello World');
});

app.listen(3000);

I appended my non-standard method to the array exported in ExpressJS's lib/router/methods.js. This allow me to write my server code as expected. When using express.methodOverride() and a POST request with _method=foo, it works. But an actual FOO request doesn't work. As soon as the client send the first line of the request the connection is closed by the server:

$telnet localhost 3000
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
FOO / HTTP/1.1
Connection closed by foreign host.

I would like to be able to implement this with ExpressJS and without avoid hacking into its core file.

Any idea if this is possible and how?

Answer 1

Short answer: No, it's not possible. Not without implementing your own HTTP module.

To test, start a barebones HTTP server ...

$ node
> require('http').createServer(function(req, res) {
...   console.log(req.method);
...   res.end();
... }).listen(8080);

Then (as you've already done) telnet to it and issue a GET and FOO request ...

$ telnet localhost 8080
Trying ::1...
telnet: connect to address ::1: Connection refused
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.1

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Connection: keep-alive
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

0

FOO / HTTP/1.1
Connection closed by foreign host.

$ 

In node console you'll see

GET

... but no FOO. So, node's native HTTP module, which Express uses, does not make these requests available.

Answer 2

Node has a hard-coded whitelist of acceptable HTTP verbs in C.

In order to accept custom verbs, you must modify the HTTP parser and recompile node.

---

You mentioned that you're trying to implement PURGE, which was added to the whitelist in v0.7.5.