Below is the code for AngularJS 1.0.x to convert PUT and DELETE requests to ‘POST’ over the network, but use them as they were. AngularJS 1.0.x has Responses Interceptors but no Request Interceptors (available from 1.1.x). So, I came with this code and of course it’s not pretty :)

/** AngularJS $http service decorator to convert PUT, DELETE as POST */
var App = angular.module('App');
App.config(['$provide', function($provide) {
	
	// configure http provider to convert 'PUT', 'DELETE' methods to 'POST' requests
	$provide.decorator('$http', ['$delegate', function($http) {
		// create function which overrides $http function
		var httpStub = function (method) {
			return function(url, data, config) {
				// AngularJS $http.delete takes 2nd argument as 'config' object
				// 'data' will come as 'config.data'
				if(method === 'delete') {
					config = data;
					config && (data = config.data);
				}
				
				config || (config = {});
				config.headers || (config.headers = {});
				
				// override actual request method with 'POST' request
				config.method = 'POST';
				
				// set the actual method in the header
				config.headers['X-HTTP-Method-Override'] = method;
				
				return $http(angular.extend(config, {
					url: url,
					data: data
				}));
			};
		};
		
		// backup of original methods
		$http._put = $http.put;
		$http._delete = $http['delete'];
		
		// override the 
		$http.put = httpStub('put');
		$http['delete'] = httpStub('delete');
		
		return $http;
	}]);
	
}]);

Why is it required?

I use REST (JAX-RS) approach for developing & exposing server side services are resources in almost all projects and I totally recommend it.

And, REST recommends to use appropriate HTTP method designators (ex: GET to get all user names, POST to save a user details). But sometimes for some projects, especially, in production environments this recommendation is undesirable as few things allowing HTTP methods other than GET and POST (PUT, DELETE and other methods) will degrade the server security and I m not sure this should be a concern now a days if we correctly configure the front-end server, like Apache, or any solid reason?

We faced the same scenario in current project in which we use the excellent AngularJS framework for building client side UI, and Jersey as JAX-RS implementation.

But, I like the idea of using the appropriate HTTP methods instead of using POST for all requests but with different URI, like /user/add for saving user details, and user/delete for deleting a user, which is totally out of sync with REST idea. My idea is to use the semantically correct methods in the code, and to have a client & server side converters to the necessary conversions from PUT and DELETE to POST method.

Jersey out of box provides PostReplaceFilter which treats POST request with a special header or query param as PUT or DELETE bases on the header/param value.

xml web.xml (Jersey POST replacement container request filter) <!-- support HTTP method replacing of a POST request to be firewall friendly; actual request method will be set either in 'X-HTTP-Method-Override', or a query parameter '_method' --> <init-param> <param-name>com.sun.jersey.spi.container.ContainerRequestFilters</param-name> <param-value>com.sun.jersey.api.container.filter.PostReplaceFilter</param-value> </init-param>

But to a achieve required functionality in AngularJS, especially in v1.0.x, there is no Request Interceptor concept :( So I had to come up with the above $http service decorator, which is not that difficult to write.