nseaSeb
RFC 10008 - HTTP QUERY method: any plans for Plug/Cowboy support?
The IETF published RFC 10008 in June 2026, standardizing a new HTTP method: QUERY. It’s meant to fill the gap between GET (safe/idempotent, but no defined body semantics) and POST (body support, but no safety guarantee) — useful for complex read-only searches with structured filter payloads. A few other ecosystems already have open discussions/issues about supporting it:
- Spring Framework: open issue requesting `RequestMethod.QUERY`
- Jakarta Servlet: open issue, with a Tomcat PR in progress
- Fetch/WHATWG:
fetch(url, { method: 'QUERY', body })
It already works at the JS level I couldn’t find any discussion about QUERY support in Cowboy or Plug. Has anyone looked into this, or is it too early to be worth tracking? Curious whether this is something the community sees value in, especially combined with hypermedia-style APIs (HATEOAS/JSON:API) where a QUERY could return both search results and the relevant action links in one request.
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kevinschweikert
There are open PRs for Phoenix and Plug:
nseaSeb
Thanks Kevin, I hadn’t seen those! Good to know it’s already being worked on.
LostKobrakai
As far as I know HTTP methods can be arbitrary. E.g. webdav does use additional methods beyond the http defined ones. So I’d expect the webservers like bandit or cowboy not needing to change. Those PRs were about making phoenix and plug adjust for the layers of behaviour they have on top of http, which are dependant on certain methods like when to parse the http body or router macros.
I think the change taking more time won’t be bare support, but actual usage of the new method by tools and libraries.
nseaSeb
That makes sense, thanks for the clarification — good to know it’s really about the Plug/Phoenix layer, not the transport itself.
On the adoption side, one angle I find interesting is pairing QUERY with hypermedia-style responses (HATEOAS / JSON:API). A search endpoint could accept a QUERY with structured filters and return results that each carry their relevant action links (e.g.
add_to_cart,view_details) — combining a safe, cacheable read with self-describing responses. Do you think that kind of combination is likely to drive real-world adoption, or is it more a niche use case?LostKobrakai
I love the fact that we’re no longer bound to url encoded formatting for side effect free requests. But it’ll take time for existing solutions do adopt it. Like I don’t see graphql as an industry to instantly switch to query over post.