ETag, Is-Modified-Since, Last-Modified, Cache-Control don't require any parsing of the request body.
And the relevance is huge. It's one thing to match a resource id in a URL in an idempotent cacheable request. It's another to have request body fully parsed by a caching middleware layer in a non-idempotent non-cacheable request.
> I think you are just annoyed that they misappropriated HTTP to do it.
They looked at HTTP and threw out everything HTTP already has built in. And all the tools.
As far as I understand it you can use the request body directly as a caching key. No need to parse it. If you request exactly the same thing there’s no need to re-request it.
Also, a quick look at the top search query for “Apollo graphql caching” shows that Apollo needs to deconsteuct the object (both for the request and the response) to be able to cache things: https://www.apollographql.com/docs/react/advanced/caching/
(I’m using Apollo here as one of the most advanced GraphQL solutions)
That sounds exactly the same as the thing you do when caching a HTTP request to me..?
Whether the fields are in the request body or the query string is pretty much irrelevant.
I think you are just annoyed that they misappropriated HTTP to do it.