Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting - Third Edition

HTTP methods

HTTP supports a number of different methods, including the following:

• GET
• HEAD
• POST
• PUT
• DELETE
• CONNECT
• OPTIONS
• TRACE
• PATCH

These methods are defined in the HTTP 1.1 specification: https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec9.html.

It is common to find that a web server only supports a subset of these. In many cases, supporting too many methods is deemed to be a security risk. The Invoke-WebRequest command can be used to verify the list of HTTP methods supported by a site, for example:

PS> Invoke-WebRequest www.indented.co.uk -Method OPTIONS | 
>>    Select-Object -ExpandProperty Headers
 
Key            Value  
---            -----  
Allow          GET, HEAD