How do you do an HTTP Put?

Solution 1:

Here's a C# example using HttpWebRequest:

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Net;

class Test
{
        static void Main()
        {
                string xml = "<xml>...</xml>";
                byte[] arr = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(xml);
                HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create("http://localhost/");
                request.Method = "PUT";
                request.ContentType = "text/xml";
                request.ContentLength = arr.Length;
                Stream dataStream = request.GetRequestStream();
                dataStream.Write(arr, 0, arr.Length);
                dataStream.Close();
                HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
                string returnString = response.StatusCode.ToString();
                Console.WriteLine(returnString);
        }
}

Update: there's now an HttpClient class in System.Net.Http (available as a NuGet package) that makes this a bit easier:

using System;
using System.Net.Http;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        var client = new HttpClient();
        var content = new StringContent("<xml>...</xml>");
        var response = client.PutAsync("http://localhost/", content).Result;
        Console.WriteLine(response.StatusCode);
    }
}

Solution 2:

PUT and DELETE are likely to require that you use AJAX and make XMLHttpRequests since the FORM tag only supports GET and POST verbs and links only make GET requests.

With jQuery:

 $.ajax( {
       url: '/controller/action',
       type: 'PUT',
       data: function() { ...package some data as XML },
       dataType: 'xml',
       ... more options...
 );

The note on the jQuery ajax options page warns that some browsers don't support PUT and DELETE for the request type. FWIW, I've never used PUT but have used DELETE in IE and FF. Haven't tested in Safari or Opera.