PUT request method

The PUT HTTP method creates a new resource or replaces a representation of the target resource with the request content.

The difference between PUT and POST is that PUT is idempotent: calling it once is no different from calling it several times successively (there are no side effects).

Request has body Successful response has body Safe Idempotent Cacheable Allowed in HTML forms

Yes

May

Yes

Syntax

http

PUT <request-target>["?"<query>] HTTP/1.1

<request-target>

Identifies the target resource of the request when combined with the information provided in the Host header. This is an absolute path (e.g., /path/to/file.html) in requests to an origin server, and an absolute URL in requests to proxies (e.g., http://www.example.com/path/to/file.html).

<query> Optional

An optional query component preceded by a question-mark ?. Often used to carry identifying information in the form of key=value pairs.

Examples

Successfully creating a resource

The following PUT request asks to create a resource at example.com/new.html with the content <p>New File</p>:

http
PUT /new.html HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Content-type: text/html
Content-length: 16

<p>New File</p>

If the target resource does not have a current representation and the PUT request successfully creates one, then the origin server must send a 201 Created response:

http
HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-Location: /new.html

If the target resource does have a current representation and that representation is successfully modified with the state in the request, the origin server must send either a 200 OK or a 204 No Content to indicate successful completion of the request:

http
HTTP/1.1 204 No Content
Content-Location: /existing.html

Specifications

Specification

HTTP Semantics
# PUT

Browser compatibility

The browser doesn't use the PUT method for user-initiated actions, so "browser compatibility" doesn't apply. Developers can set this request method using fetch().

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This page was last modified on Jul 4, 2025 by MDN contributors.

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