How POST Request Parameters work? With Breakdown for API Attacks

created by: Japneet Sachdeva

POST request is the parent method for all the other Request types. Hence understanding its implementation and its internal working can benefit your Testing and QA process.

What is POST request?

HTTP POST request is a method used by the web to send data to a server to create or update a resource.

Commonly POST requests are used while filling up new user form data, address information etc.

Post Requests use the data in the request payload, which helps in transferring large amount data easily.

Structure of POST Request

A POST request consists of several key components:

1. URL: The complete address of the server endpoint
2. Headers: Metadata for the request such as content-type & authorization
3. Body: Request Payload which is used to create, update data

Example:

curl 'https://reqres.in/api/users' \ -H 'accept: /' \ -H 'accept-language: en-IN,en-GB;q=0.9,en-US;q=0.8,en;q=0.7' \ -H 'cache-control: no-cache' \ -H 'content-type: application/json' \
 - data-raw '{"name":"morpheus","job":"leader"}'

Let’s decode the above Request: