Nginx supports PUT and DELETE without the dav module. It however requires PUT requests include a Content-Length header and does not support Transfer-Encoding: chunked (although the chunkin module adds this support).
The problem I was wrestling with was specifically PUT requests with no entity body and therefore no Content-Length (or chunked transfer encoding).
I've tried to explain in other comments why asking our users to add a Content-Length: 0 to empty PUTs isn't feasible.
If your RESTful API supports PUTs without bodies, you'll need to either use my patch or ask your users to always include Content-Length: 0.
The problem I was wrestling with was specifically PUT requests with no entity body and therefore no Content-Length (or chunked transfer encoding).
I've tried to explain in other comments why asking our users to add a Content-Length: 0 to empty PUTs isn't feasible.
If your RESTful API supports PUTs without bodies, you'll need to either use my patch or ask your users to always include Content-Length: 0.