Re: [apps-discuss] media type for partial JSON updates?

Julian:

I think there is already an XML format for PATCH, right? (can't seem
to find it right now) It might not bee too much work to spin up a
parallel media type definition using the JSON format.

That document might be proper place to describe a typical PATCH media
type as (improvising here) "a format designed to *modify* an existing
entity rather than replace all or part of an existing entity and/or
introduce the notion of "partial updates" through the description of
the PATCH method.

mca
http://amundsen.com/blog/
http://twitter.com@mamund
http://mamund.com/foaf.rdf#me

On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 10:51, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> a few days ago, there was an epic thread over on rest-discuss
> (<http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rest-discuss/message/18011>) on the use
> of HTTP PUT for partial updates of JSON-modeled data.
>
> (Of course we all know over here that PUT isn't for partial updates :-)
>
> However, apparently many people currently do this, as it's simply convenient
> to send a subset of the object and have the server just update those fields.
>
> Now it's obvious that these kind of requests really should use PATCH,
> because that's what it's for after all. What's missing here is a media type
> describing this, though.
>
> Should we document patch semantics for this use case, and define a matching
> media type?
>
> It might be a light-weight alternative to what
> <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pbryan-json-patch-04> describes. For
> example, taking the example from
> <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pbryan-json-patch-04#appendix-A.5>:
>
>   {
>       "baz": "qux",
>       "foo": "bar"
>   }
>
>   A JSON Patch document:
>
>   [
>         { "replace": "/baz", "value": "boo" }
>   ]
>
>   The resulting JSON document:
>
>   {
>       "baz": "boo",
>       "foo": "bar"
>   }
>
> ...the alternative notation would be...:
>
>
>   {
>       "baz": "boo"
>   }
>
> ...sent with PATCH and an internet media type such as
> "application/partial-update-json".
>
> Feedback appreciated,
>
> Julian
>
> PS: And yes, this would only allow replacing things; but this might be good
> enough for many use cases. Not defining something for this will cause people
> to stick with PUT, or to use PATCH with an incorrect media type, which we
> should avoid.
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