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A comment on Some web development tips from a former Digg developer. Parent comment

Re:Some web development tips from a former Digg developer by njharman on Friday August 24, 2012 @05:08PM (#4429670)
you're making way too much assumption as to what logout does behind the scenes. "without changing result" != "without changing state"

sending notifications, updating counters, etc. all could be result of logging out.

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Re:Some web development tips from a former Digg developer by kilburn on Friday August 24, 2012 @05:24PM (#4429762)
I think it is easy for us to agree in that, from the client's point of view, logging out of a website is idempotent.

Now, you got a point about idempotence from the server's point of view. However, it would take a _badly_ programmed website for the logout operation to _not_ be idempotent. Sending notifications, updating counter, etc. _without first checking if the user is really logged in or not_ is simply moronic. This simple check is what would turn the logout operation into an idempotent one in the server too.

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