Ah wait, I found it -- it seems to have come about because of HTML 2.0 form encoding (application/x-www-form-urlencoded)

https://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_toc.html#SEC8.2.2

and also likely popularized by QUERY_STRING for cgi-bin stuff

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3875#section-4.1.7

basically you encode all the form data using = and &

then if method=get you pass that along as the query component

or if method=post then you pass it along as the body of the HTTP request

and i guess it stuck that way despite GET for forms being a Bad Idea.

so in short, it looks like query parameters are just an evolution of form data parameters.

@jbqueru the form thing is really getting to me; i only found any of this out because i was looking at the problem of ordering "query parameters" causing two URIs to be semantically equivalent despite being syntactically different.

@trwnh doesn't that kind of depend on the type of form? Classically for a something like a search GET would be a more appropriate method than POST or PUT …

@oblomov maybe? i can see arguments for search being a POST.

@oblomov the semantic argument might be that GET is appropriate for when you want to refer to a query itself, for example using /search?bananas to search for "bananas". but the problems with GET are numerous:

- query components are often logged, while request bodies are not
- query components are limited in how complex they can get -- it's not easy to represent arrays, maps, hierarchical data, and so on
- search may be an expensive request, so better to not allow any old browser to do it

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@trwnh Unless I'm mistaken it's part of the CGI spec not URI spec.

@dalias yeah i figured this out downthread -- it's HTML 2.0 forms and application/x-www-url-formencoded when the form method=get

CGI also popularized it as well, although CGI takes the opaque QUERY_STRING so the convention mostly arises from html form encoding

@trwnh hm I'm not convinced. The main issue is that neither POST nor PUT are conceptually appropriate. Among the methods defined by HTTP, GET is the one that's conceptually closest. OTOH, those *are* problems with using a query string. Maybe they could be reduced by other means, such as additional headers or body payload (GET *can* have a payload)

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@oblomov well POST is "do something" not necessarily "create something". https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110.html#section-9.3.3

> process the representation enclosed in the request according to the resource's own specific semantics

imo "take this request, parse some params out of it, then perform the action" is a valid way of thinking about search.

as for GET,

> requests transfer of a current selected representation for the target resource

is often but not always appropriate. depends on if you see results as a resource.

@oblomov

and that's what it really comes down to imo -- the use of a query component fundamentally alters the identity, you are asking for a different resource when you append the query component. /search and /search?query are different resources.

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@trwnh oh good point, so if it's done by GET it *must* include the query parameters in the URL. And yeah, now I can see better why POST would be a better choice.

@oblomov there is one advantage to GET and that is the ability to share search results by copypasting a link to someone else or using it as an href

@trwnh @oblomov I'd add one additional benefit: they're infinitely easier to debug and test.

At least it's pretty common practice as I recall in Java EE to make an HttpServlet, generate doGet/doPost, and have doPost just call doGet, or vice versa.

Then GET URL calls let you diagnose what's being passed to which query parameter.