Ryan Tomayko wrote:

> On May 10, 2005, at 1:42 PM, A.M. Kuchling wrote:
>
>>> BTW, "idempotent" is not actually enough.  "Safe" is actually the
>>> key phrase in the specification.
>>
>>
>> Surely "safe" is a weaker condition than "idempotent"?  After all, GET
>> is never idempotent if the web server is logging accesses, but having
>> extra accesses recorded is safe for the client.
>
> .... and deleting something should be idempotent anyway. You can
> delete the same thing as many times as you want, the result will
> always be that the item no longer exists.

I can think of numerous cases where I'd rather recieve a 404 or 5xx when
trying to delete something that doesn't exist. This could signal an
error in application logic.

-- Graham