It is worthwhile to consider how to make several of the features currently offered by web actions more generally available to all action. It may also be useful to generalize the web-export annotation to provide additional control over which HTTP methods an action is prepared the handle and similarly which content types it supports. One can imagine doing this with a richer web-export annotation which may define at least these additional properties:
methods: array of HTTP methods accepted.extensions: array of supported extensions.authentication: one of {"none", "builtin"} where none is for anonymous access and builtin for OpenWhisk authentication.As in -a web-export '{ "methods": ["get", "post"], "extensions": ["http"], "authentication": "none" }' for a web action that only accepts get and post requests, handled .http extensions only, and permits anonymous access. A richer set of annotations will allow the controller to reject requests early if a web action does not support a particular method for example. The current implementation will accept get, post, put and delete HTTP methods without discrimination for any web action.