[YARN-2401] Rethinking of the HTTP method of TimelineWebServices#postEntities

• Type: Sub-task
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Won't Fix
• Component/s: timelineserver
• Assignee: Zhijie Shen
• Reporter: Zhijie Shen
• Created: 09/Aug/14 18:57
• Updated: 01/May/15 22:00
• Resolved: 01/May/15 22:00

Description

Now TimelineWebServices#postEntities is using POST. However, semantically, postEntities is creating an entity or append more data into it. POST may not be the most proper method to for this API.

AFAIK, PUT is used to update the entire resource and supposed to be idempotent. Therefore, I'm not sure it's an idea to change the method to PUT because once the entity is created, the following updates are actually appending more data to the existing one. The best fit should be PATCH, however, it requires the additional implementation at the web services side. Hence, somebody online suggested using POST for partial non-idempotent update as well. We need to think more about it.