# Supporting PUT & DELETE in the Zend Framework By Ben Ramsey Published on February 28, 2008 Creating a [RESTful (Representational State Transfer)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer) Web service is not simply about serving read-only content through HTTP `GET` requests. It's about using the full range of HTTP's constrained interface to allow clients to consume or create resources within your service. Take a look at [CouchDB](http://couchdb.apache.org/), for example. Its initial releases look very promising, and the server accepts `GET`, `POST`, `PUT`, and `DELETE` requests to manipulate resources in the system. I can't wait until the project implements authentication and authorization features; then, it will look much more attractive for real-world use. But I digress… I've never been too happy with the Zend Framework's RPC-based approach to creating RESTful Web services with [Zend\_Rest\_Server](http://web.archive.org/web/20080222170034/http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.rest.server.html), even though I have seen some [good discussion](http://blog.astrumfutura.com/2006/11/restful-web-services-with-zend-framework/) about using routes and Zend\_Rest\_Server to create a resource-oriented architecture. Rather than get too in-depth about this issue, I'll just point to [this thread](http://web.archive.org/web/20080307152512/http://www.nabble.com/Our-REST-implementation-td10834932s16154.html) and save my full thoughts on Zend\_Rest\_Server for another day. Suffice it to say, Zend_Rest_Server is not focused on resources but, instead, what you can do with those resources (procedures, methods, verbs) and also assumes you're only ever going to provide an XML-based, read-only REST service. With REST, this is not the case, and, with the publication of the [Atom Publishing Protocol](http://tools.ietf.org/wg/atompub/) (a protocol that follows the REST architectural style) as [RFC 5023](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5023), now is the time more than ever to grasp the read-write capabilities of the RESTful Web. But I digress (again)… I've recently been wrapped up in an effort to design and implement a RESTful API using the Atom Protocol for a project at work. We are using the Zend Framework as the underlying framework for the project, so, in order to follow the Atom Protocol, I needed to support the HTTP methods `PUT` and `DELETE`. Apache can handle `GET` and `POST` easily because the request itself tells Apache the resource to use when processing the request. With `PUT` or `DELETE`, the resource identified by the request may not even exist, so Apache needs you to specify a script to process the request. To do this, I added the following lines to my virtual host configuration: ``` # PUT and DELETE support Script PUT /index.php Script DELETE /index.php ``` Now, all `PUT` and `DELETE` requests are handled by the Zend Framework [bootstrap script](http://web.archive.org/web/20080228222148/http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.controller.html#zend.controller.quickstart.go.bootstrap) and the dispatcher handles them in the same way it handles `GET` and `POST` requests. To further support other HTTP methods and the REST architectural style, I've proposed the addition of the following methods on the Zend_Controller_Request_Http class: * `isGet()` - Was the request made by GET? * `isPut()` - Was the request made by PUT? * `isDelete()` - Was the request made by DELETE? * `isHead()` - Was the request made by HEAD? * `isOptions()` - Was the request made by OPTIONS? * `getEntityBody()` - Return the raw entity body of the request, if present It's a very simple addition, but feel free to comment on [my patch](http://framework.zend.com/issues/browse/ZF-2723) and offer any improvements or additions. See also [PUT method support](http://php.net/manual/en/features.file-upload.put-method.php) in the [PHP manual](http://php.net/manual).