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whatwg
fetch
HTML2016–2026
whatwg / fetch

fetch

Fetch Standard

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22Distinct people
33Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
2.3KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Fetch Standard

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

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Also in these discussions

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This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:03:16 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year33 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2016-04-02 14:58:02 UTC to 2026-06-23 10:11:14 UTC.

0510152016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments20162017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 13 mentions; 0 submissions, 13 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 1 submissions, 3 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC13013
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC413
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

33 sources
EnnEmmEss·Jun 23, 2026
Using GET with a Body doesn't work if you try using it in the browser with JS fetch for example[1]. Additionally, a lot of existing web servers by default ignore GET requests with a body. The use case of QUERY is because POST conveys non-safe, non-idempotent requests which can potentially modify stuff according to the REST spec. GET requests on the other hand convey retrieval of a resource. However, due to GET requests not having a body, there's a limit to the amount of data you can put in the URL and you also cannot put sensitive data in it. Additionally, GET requests are meant to be highly cacheable by default while a lot of the QUERY type requests are usually meant more for one-shot access. QUERY is meant to address these limitations. [1]: https://github.com/whatwg/fetch/issues/551
In The new HTTP QUERY method explained
bawolff·Nov 1, 2025
> FTP was never integrated: it just so happened that some platforms shipped a protocol handler for it, and some browsers included an FTP protocol handler themselves. But I don’t believe you could ever, say, fetch("ftp://…"). I never tried, but i believe the relavent spec said it should work, until it was deprecated and removed from the standard https://github.com/whatwg/fetch/pull/1166 With flash - that might all be true, but there was a time when many websites required it. It might not have been a de jure standard but it was a de facto standard. To the point where a browser not supporting it was considered broken. Apple refusing to support it was incredibly controversial at the time.
In Intent to Deprecate and Remove XSLT
patrickmeenan·Sep 15, 2024
Sorry, I should provide more context. The language in the IETF draft is a bit generic because it is a HTTP spec intended to be used more broadly than just web content in browsers and each should evaluate the risks for their use case. For browsers specifically, the fetch spec changes will be explicit about the cache clearing and partitioning (partitioned by both top-level document site and frame origin). You can see Chrome's implementation here: https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:net... The fetch spec changes are in progress (just documenting, the discussions have already happened). You can follow along here if you'd like: https://github.com/whatwg/fetch/issues/1739
In Compression Dictionary Transport
jauntywundrkind·Sep 6, 2024
I find the excuse for unshipping especially ridiculous because developers never had a good chance to make use of Push! We can't see Pushes coming at us, cant be responsive to them! https://github.com/whatwg/fetch/issues/51 It also feels like the use case everyone was focusing on/acknowlegding of content delivery had plenty of opportunities left. There weren't very many visible public attempts! Very few people had access to libraries or starting places to begin to jump in, figure out what to Push!
In Intent to unship: HTTP/2 Push
rektide·May 15, 2023
I wish there were a way to push not just anonymous data/events but http resources, to similar effect. SSE & websockets & http streams can send anonymous data, but I'd like to be able to send an actual thing. As per the most core architecture of the web: > Axiom 0a: Universality 2. Any resource of significance should be given a URI. https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Axioms.html#uri Or alternatively, > Cool URLs don't change (implicitly, cool things have URLs, see above). https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI Instead of pushing to a chat app an anonymous blob of json for a chat message to a room, the server could assert a /room/42/msg/c0f3 resource, could identify universally what it is it's sending. The advantage would be so high. It'd become a standard way to assert a resource, to make known a fact, that would be viable across systems. Fur
Read the rest
ther http requests to the resource would just work. Folks could link to the resource. How cool it would be if we could send not just data but resources? We have come glancingly close to getting such a thing so many times. The HyBi mailing list that begat websockets had a number of alternate more resourceful ideas floating around such as a BEEP protocol that allowed patterns beyond request/response of resources. The browser actually implements an internal protocol that uses HTTP2/push to send resourceful messages, web push protocol/RFC8030, https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8030. But the underlying http2/push was de-implemented for webserving in general, and even when it was available, it lacked the oft requested ability to get notice of new pushed resources. (https://github.com/whatwg/fetch/issues/65 was an old request. https://github.com/whatwg/fetch/issues/607 had some steam in making it happen.) Tragic backwards moves in my view, and never acknowledged by blink-dev when protests arose. The best we have today is to stream json-ls events, which have an @id property identifying them. But developers would have to snoop these events, and store them in a service worker, to make them actually accessible as http resources. I continue to hold hope eventually we'll get better at using urls to send data, to assert new things happening... But it's been nearly 30 years of me hoping, and with some fleeting exceptions the browser teams have seemed disinterested in making urls cool, in spite of a number of requests. We've been left at un-web side-channels like SSE & Websockets for a long long time now. Wouldn't it be nice to see some real growth for http capabilities that we really can use, that are more than abstract underlying transport tweaks like h2 and h3?
In Server-sent events
rektide·Feb 22, 2023
Alas the web standards world has been a trashfire useless pile of nothing at giving webdevs any use of http2 or http3. Push support for fetch was one of the first issues opened[1], and summarily ignored by nearly every browser & spec author & never made at all accessible, right up until modern times where the browsers said, oh hey, we never really made this feature available to webdevs, but since you all havent used it anyways, we're removing Push from the browser. SMDH. Monstrous shit. In short, the browser failed to make basic modern http usable by anyone so there's no hope of getting off the janky ugly grpc-web trashfire & making grpc from the client just work, like it always should have been able to do. Pathetic pathetic showing by the browsers here. Beyond neglect, how they mishandled http2 and http2 and gave webdevs access to almost
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none of what the most exciting new thing on the www was. Huge huge miss. Incredible bullshit. Some day we'll be running http3 over webtransport & fixing their wrongs. Thia is such a bullshit long workaround, such a pathetic way to handle the browser getting nowhere with new http standards, end running around their utte unmoving complete inability to advance at all. But we'll start to actually use http intensively again, soon, in spite of the browser & standards community being such ridiculous & farcical impedances against using http2 and http3 at all. What a tragic shit show of uselessness it's been, trying ro actually enjoy the new http standards; resistance on all fronts to real usage. [1] https://github.com/whatwg/fetch/issues/51
In Is it time to replace TCP in data centers?
rektide·Aug 19, 2022
As I commented yesterday[1], accelerating page loading was only one use case for http Push frames. Alas it's the only ude case Chrome ever acknowledged or cared about or have ever seemingly recognized (in spite of it under-the-hood powering Push API). Push also could have been useful to replace theess of non-web non-resourceful ad-hoc protocols people have endlessly kept reinventing atop WebSockets/WebTransport/SSE/Long-polling to push things like new chat messages to the browser. The author cites Jake Archibald's struggle using Push for page loading. But Jake also was interested in expanding past this incredibly limited use case, and threw together a mini-proposal to let Fetch hear of incoming Pushed resources[2]. Chrome though largely have never acknowledged this desire, even though it's been asked for for ~7 years now. So the web is st
Read the rest
ill request & response & there's still no natural obvious way for the browser to hear of new resources that are ocurring. Chrome didnt listen to developers, never let us actually use the feature, and now they're killing it, and we're stuck where we were two decades ago, scabling to figuring out what to do to get some bidirectionalism beyond request-response. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32514159 [2] https://github.com/whatwg/fetch/issues/607
In Removing HTTP/2 Server Push from Chrome
rektide·Aug 18, 2022
As usual from Chrome, 100% ignores the fact that developers have wanted to use fetch to be able to reactively hear of resources coming in, & chrome has (largely) ignored these pleas. The post focuses only around the most boring & basic capability of webpage loading, since that was the only capability developers ever got. The article talks about Jake Archibald enumerating some problems with PUSH. Well, Jake was also author to a mini-proposal to add Push support to fetch so developers could try out other uses for push. Seemingly ignored by chrome. https://github.com/whatwg/fetch/issues/607 Having the browser be a minimalist, picky implementation of http protocols is hard for me to reconcile & be ok with. There's well over a half decade of neglect & plugging their ears on Chrome's side around Push, not listening to users, not delivering us l
Read the rest
ow-level extensibility manifesto capable apis, and this pulling the plug is sad and sorely premature. We are stuck forever inventing new non-http transports, over SSE, over websockets/webtransport, over long polling, becayse Chrome systematically ignored the one thing that would have made http capable of satisfying many of the desires of the old HybridBidirectional working group, & has kept the page unable to understand & recieve resources coming to it. What a blasted shame.
In Removing HTTP/2 Server Push from Chrome
twiss·Aug 8, 2022
Sure, that's fair enough. But I'm not sure if characterizing this feature as a pet feature of the gRPC team is accurate either - after all, it's simply exposing an HTTP 1.1 & H2 feature, and it was already in the WHATWG fetch spec. There, the security concerns were apparently discussed as well [1], and adding the trailer headers as a separate object was deemed safe. I haven't read the entire discussion and don't have a vested interest in it, but the WHATWG spec seems like a better place to have this discussion, and come to a conclusion, than the Chromium issue tracker. Apparently, there is a new issue for it, so that might yet happen: [2]. [1]: https://github.com/whatwg/fetch/issues/34 [2]: https://github.com/whatwg/fetch/issues/981
In Why does gRPC insist on trailers?
twiss·Aug 8, 2022
> Whether it’s because I was wrong, or failed to make the argument [for HTTP trailers support], I strongly suspect organizational boundaries had a substantial effect. The Area Tech Leads of Cloud also failed to convince their peers in Chrome, and as a result, trailers were ripped out [from the WHATWG fetch specification]. FWIW, I personally think it's a good thing that other teams within Google don't have too much of an "advantage" for getting features into Chrome, compared to other web developers, however, I also think it's very unfortunate that a single Chrome engineer gets to decide not only that it shouldn't be implemented in Chromium, but that that also has the effect of it being removed from the specification. (The linked issue [1] was also opened by a Google employee.) Of course, you might reasonably argue that, without consensus a
Read the rest
mong the browsers to implement a feature, having it in the spec is useless. But nevertheless, with Chromium being an open source project, I think it would be better if it had a more democratic process of deciding which features should be supported (without, of course, requiring Google specifically to implement them, but also without, ideally, giving Google the power to veto them). [1]: https://github.com/whatwg/fetch/issues/772
In Why does gRPC insist on trailers?

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