idempotent – Make Me Engineer

Status code when deleting a resource using HTTP DELETE for the second time

June 6, 2023 by Tarik

As HTTP requests in a stateless system should be independent, the results of one request should not be dependent on a previous request. Consider what should happen if two users did a DELETE on the same resource simultaneously. It makes sense for the second request to get a 404. The same should be true if … Read more

What is an idempotent operation?

May 1, 2022 by Tarik

In computing, an idempotent operation is one that has no additional effect if it is called more than once with the same input parameters. For example, removing an item from a set can be considered an idempotent operation on the set. In mathematics, an idempotent operation is one where f(f(x)) = f(x). For example, the … Read more