The method token indicates the request method to be performed on the target
resource. The request method is case-sensitive.
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7230#section-3.1.1
The method token is case-sensitive because it might be used as a gateway to
object-based systems with case-sensitive method names.
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7231#section-4.1
What is interesting, is that while both references say the case is important,
neither one says what case should be used. Continuing from the second
reference:
By convention, standardized methods are defined in all-uppercase US-ASCII
letters.
So now here it does say uppercase, but it also says by convention. So on paper,
it would seem that you could also use all lower. In practice, it seems only upper
is accepted:
PS C:\> curl.exe -X POST https://www.ietf.org
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<meta name="robots" content="NONE,NOARCHIVE">
<title>403 Forbidden</title>
PS C:\> curl.exe -X post https://www.ietf.org
<html>
<head><title>400 Bad Request</title></head>