[json] Use of PUT vs PATCH methods in REST API real life scenarios

First of all, some definitions:

PUT is defined in Section 9.6 RFC 2616:

The PUT method requests that the enclosed entity be stored under the supplied Request-URI. If the Request-URI refers to an already existing resource, the enclosed entity SHOULD be considered as a modified version of the one residing on the origin server. If the Request-URI does not point to an existing resource, and that URI is capable of being defined as a new resource by the requesting user agent, the origin server can create the resource with that URI.

PATCH is defined in RFC 5789:

The PATCH method requests that a set of changes described in the request entity be applied to the resource identified by the Request- URI.

Also according to RFC 2616 Section 9.1.2 PUT is Idempotent while PATCH is not.

Now let us take a look at a real example. When I do POST to /users with the data {username: 'skwee357', email: '[email protected]'} and the server is capable of creating a resource, it will respond with 201 and resource location (lets assume /users/1) and any next call to GET /users/1 will return {id: 1, username: 'skwee357', email: '[email protected]'}.

Now let us say I want to modify my email. Email modification is considered "a set of changes" and therefore I should PATCH /users/1 with "patch document". In my case it would be the json document: {email: '[email protected]'}. The server then returns 200 (assuming permission are ok). This brings me to first question:

• PATCH is NOT idempotent. It said so in RFC 2616 and RFC 5789. However if I issue the same PATCH request (with my new email), I will get the same resource state (with my email being modified to the requested value). Why is PATCH not then idempotent?

PATCH is a relatively new verb (RFC introduced in March 2010), and it comes to solve the problem of "patching" or modifying a set of fields. Before PATCH was introduced, everybody used PUT to update resources. But after PATCH was introduced, it leaves me confused about what PUT is used for. And this brings me to my second (and the main) question:

• What is the real difference between PUT and PATCH? I have read somewhere that PUT might be used to replace entire entity under specific resource, so one should send the full entity (instead of set of attributes as with PATCH). What is the real practical usage for such case? When would you like to replace / overwrite an entity at a specific resource URI and why is such an operation not considered updating / patching the entity? The only practical use case I see for PUT is issuing a PUT on a collection, i.e. /users to replace the entire collection. Issuing PUT on a specific entity makes no sense after PATCH was introduced. Am I wrong?

The difference between PUT and PATCH is that:

1. PUT is required to be idempotent. In order to achieve that, you have to put the entire complete resource in the request body.
2. PATCH can be non-idempotent. Which implies it can also be idempotent in some cases, such as the cases you described.

PATCH requires some "patch language" to tell the server how to modify the resource. The caller and the server need to define some "operations" such as "add", "replace", "delete". For example:

GET /contacts/1
{
  "id": 1,
  "name": "Sam Kwee",
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "state": "NY",
  "zip": "10001"
}

PATCH /contacts/1
{
 [{"operation": "add", "field": "address", "value": "123 main street"},
  {"operation": "replace", "field": "email", "value": "[email protected]"},
  {"operation": "delete", "field": "zip"}]
}

GET /contacts/1
{
  "id": 1,
  "name": "Sam Kwee",
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "state": "NY",
  "address": "123 main street",
}

Instead of using explicit "operation" fields, the patch language can make it implicit by defining conventions like:

in the PATCH request body:

1. The existence of a field means "replace" or "add" that field.
2. If the value of a field is null, it means delete that field.

With the above convention, the PATCH in the example can take the following form:

PATCH /contacts/1
{
  "address": "123 main street",
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "zip":
}

Which looks more concise and user-friendly. But the users need to be aware of the underlying convention.

With the operations I mentioned above, the PATCH is still idempotent. But if you define operations like: "increment" or "append", you can easily see it won't be idempotent anymore.

I was curious about this as well and found a few interesting articles. I may not answer your question to its full extent, but this at least provides some more information.

http://restful-api-design.readthedocs.org/en/latest/methods.html

The HTTP RFC specifies that PUT must take a full new resource representation as the request entity. This means that if for example only certain attributes are provided, those should be remove (i.e. set to null).

Given that, then a PUT should send the entire object. For instance,

/users/1
PUT {id: 1, username: 'skwee357', email: '[email protected]'}

This would effectively update the email. The reason PUT may not be too effective is that your only really modifying one field and including the username is kind of useless. The next example shows the difference.

/users/1
PUT {id: 1, email: '[email protected]'}

Now, if the PUT was designed according the spec, then the PUT would set the username to null and you would get the following back.

{id: 1, username: null, email: '[email protected]'}

When you use a PATCH, you only update the field you specify and leave the rest alone as in your example.

The following take on the PATCH is a little different than I have never seen before.

http://williamdurand.fr/2014/02/14/please-do-not-patch-like-an-idiot/

The difference between the PUT and PATCH requests is reflected in the way the server processes the enclosed entity to modify the resource identified by the Request-URI. In a PUT request, the enclosed entity is considered to be a modified version of the resource stored on the origin server, and the client is requesting that the stored version be replaced. With PATCH, however, the enclosed entity contains a set of instructions describing how a resource currently residing on the origin server should be modified to produce a new version. The PATCH method affects the resource identified by the Request-URI, and it also MAY have side effects on other resources; i.e., new resources may be created, or existing ones modified, by the application of a PATCH.

PATCH /users/123

[
    { "op": "replace", "path": "/email", "value": "[email protected]" }
]

You are more or less treating the PATCH as a way to update a field. So instead of sending over the partial object, you're sending over the operation. i.e. Replace email with value.

The article ends with this.

It is worth mentioning that PATCH is not really designed for truly REST APIs, as Fielding's dissertation does not define any way to partially modify resources. But, Roy Fielding himself said that PATCH was something [he] created for the initial HTTP/1.1 proposal because partial PUT is never RESTful. Sure you are not transferring a complete representation, but REST does not require representations to be complete anyway.

Now, I don't know if I particularly agree with the article as many commentators point out. Sending over a partial representation can easily be a description of the changes.

For me, I am mixed on using PATCH. For the most part, I will treat PUT as a PATCH since the only real difference I have noticed so far is that PUT "should" set missing values to null. It may not be the 'most correct' way to do it, but good luck coding perfect.

One additional information I just one to add is that a PATCH request use less bandwidth compared to a PUT request since just a part of the data is sent not the whole entity. So just use a PATCH request for updates of specific records like (1-3 records) while PUT request for updating a larger amount of data. That is it, don't think too much or worry about it too much.

Let me quote and comment more closely the RFC 7231 section 4.2.2, already cited in earlier comments :

A request method is considered "idempotent" if the intended effect on the server of multiple identical requests with that method is the same as the effect for a single such request. Of the request methods defined by this specification, PUT, DELETE, and safe request methods are idempotent.

(...)

Idempotent methods are distinguished because the request can be repeated automatically if a communication failure occurs before the client is able to read the server's response. For example, if a client sends a PUT request and the underlying connection is closed before any response is received, then the client can establish a new connection and retry the idempotent request. It knows that repeating the request will have the same intended effect, even if the original request succeeded, though the response might differ.

So, what should be "the same" after a repeated request of an idempotent method? Not the server state, nor the server response, but the intended effect. In particular, the method should be idempotent "from the point of view of the client". Now, I think that this point of view shows that the last example in Dan Lowe's answer, which I don't want to plagiarize here, indeed shows that a PATCH request can be non-idempotent (in a more natural way than the example in Jason Hoetger's answer).

Indeed, let's make the example slightly more precise by making explicit one possible intend for the first client. Let's say that this client goes through the list of users with the project to check their emails and zip codes. He starts with user 1, notices that the zip is right but the email is wrong. He decides to correct this with a PATCH request, which is fully legitimate, and sends only

PATCH /users/1
{"email": "[email protected]"}

since this is the only correction. Now, the request fails because of some network issue and is re-submitted automatically a couple of hours later. In the meanwhile, another client has (erroneously) modified the zip of user 1. Then, sending the same PATCH request a second time does not achieve the intended effect of the client, since we end up with an incorrect zip. Hence the method is not idempotent in the sense of the RFC.

If instead the client uses a PUT request to correct the email, sending to the server all properties of user 1 along with the email, his intended effect will be achieved even if the request has to be re-sent later and user 1 has been modified in the meanwhile --- since the second PUT request will overwrite all changes since the first request.

To conclude the discussion on the idempotency, I should note that one can define idempotency in the REST context in two ways. Let's first formalize a few things:

A resource is a function with its codomain being the class of strings. In other words, a resource is a subset of String × Any, where all the keys are unique. Let's call the class of the resources Res.

A REST operation on resources, is a function f(x: Res, y: Res): Res. Two examples of REST operations are:

• PUT(x: Res, y: Res): Res = x, and
• PATCH(x: Res, y: Res): Res, which works like PATCH({a: 2}, {a: 1, b: 3}) == {a: 2, b: 3}.

(This definition is specifically designed to argue about PUT and POST, and e.g. doesn't make much sense on GET and POST, as it doesn't care about persistence).

Now, by fixing x: Res (informatically speaking, using currying), PUT(x: Res) and PATCH(x: Res) are univariate functions of type Res ? Res.

1. A function g: Res ? Res is called globally idempotent, when g ? g == g, i.e. for any y: Res, g(g(y)) = g(y).

2. Let x: Res a resource, and k = x.keys. A function g = f(x) is called left idempotent, when for each y: Res, we have g(g(y))|? == g(y)|?. It basically means that the result should be same, if we look at the applied keys.

So, PATCH(x) is not globally idempotent, but is left idempotent. And left idempotency is the thing that matters here: if we patch a few keys of the resource, we want those keys to be same if we patch it again, and we don't care about the rest of the resource.

And when RFC is talking about PATCH not being idempotent, it is talking about global idempotency. Well, it's good that it's not globally idempotent, otherwise it would have been a broken operation.

Now, Jason Hoetger's answer is trying to demonstrate that PATCH is not even left idempotent, but it's breaking too many things to do so:

• First of all, PATCH is used on a set, although PATCH is defined to work on maps / dictionaries / key-value objects.
• If someone really wants to apply PATCH to sets, then there is a natural translation that should be used: t: Set<T> ? Map<T, Boolean>, defined with x in A iff t(A)(x) == True. Using this definition, patching is left idempotent.
• In the example, this translation was not used, instead, the PATCH works like a POST. First of all, why is an ID generated for the object? And when is it generated? If the object is first compared to the elements of the set, and if no matching object is found, then the ID is generated, then again the program should work differently ({id: 1, email: "[email protected]"} must match with {email: "[email protected]"}, otherwise the program is always broken and the PATCH cannot possibly patch). If the ID is generated before checking against the set, again the program is broken.

One can make examples of PUT being non-idempotent with breaking half of the things that are broken in this example:

• An example with generated additional features would be versioning. One may keep record of the number of changes on a single object. In this case, PUT is not idempotent: PUT /user/12 {email: "[email protected]"} results in {email: "...", version: 1} the first time, and {email: "...", version: 2} the second time.
• Messing with the IDs, one may generate a new ID every time the object is updated, resulting in a non-idempotent PUT.

All the above examples are natural examples that one may encounter.

My final point is, that PATCH should not be globally idempotent, otherwise won't give you the desired effect. You want to change the email address of your user, without touching the rest of the information, and you don't want to overwrite the changes of another party accessing the same resource.

A very nice explanation is here-

https://blog.segunolalive.com/posts/restful-api-design-%E2%80%94-put-vs-patch/#:~:text=RFC%205789,not%20required%20to%20be%20idempotent.

A Normal Payload- // House on plot 1 { address: 'plot 1', owner: 'segun', type: 'duplex', color: 'green', rooms: '5', kitchens: '1', windows: 20 } PUT For Updated- // PUT request payload to update windows of House on plot 1 { address: 'plot 1', owner: 'segun', type: 'duplex', color: 'green', rooms: '5', kitchens: '1', windows: 21 } Note: In above payload we are trying to update windows from 20 to 21.

Now see the PATH payload- // Patch request payload to update windows on the House { windows: 21 }

Since PATCH is not idempotent, failed requests are not automatically re-attempted on the network. Also, if a PATCH request is made to a non-existent url e.g attempting to replace the front door of a non-existent building, it should simply fail without creating a new resource unlike PUT, which would create a new one using the payload. Come to think of it, it’ll be odd having a lone door at a house address.

In my humble opinion, idempotence means:

• PUT:

I send a compete resource definition, so - the resulting resource state is exactly as defined by PUT params. Each and every time I update the resource with the same PUT params - the resulting state is exactly the same.

• PATCH:

I sent only part of the resource definition, so it might happen other users are updating this resource's OTHER parameters in a meantime. Consequently - consecutive patches with the same parameters and their values might result with different resource state. For instance:

Presume an object defined as follows:

CAR: - color: black, - type: sedan, - seats: 5

I patch it with:

{color: 'red'}

The resulting object is:

CAR: - color: red, - type: sedan, - seats: 5

Then, some other users patches this car with:

{type: 'hatchback'}

so, the resulting object is:

CAR: - color: red, - type: hatchback, - seats: 5

Now, if I patch this object again with:

{color: 'red'}

the resulting object is:

CAR: - color: red, - type: hatchback, - seats: 5

What is DIFFERENT to what I've got previously!

This is why PATCH is not idempotent while PUT is idempotent.

Though Dan Lowe's excellent answer very thoroughly answered the OP's question about the difference between PUT and PATCH, its answer to the question of why PATCH is not idempotent is not quite correct.

To show why PATCH isn't idempotent, it helps to start with the definition of idempotence (from Wikipedia):

The term idempotent is used more comprehensively to describe an operation that will produce the same results if executed once or multiple times [...] An idempotent function is one that has the property f(f(x)) = f(x) for any value x.

In more accessible language, an idempotent PATCH could be defined as: After PATCHing a resource with a patch document, all subsequent PATCH calls to the same resource with the same patch document will not change the resource.

Conversely, a non-idempotent operation is one where f(f(x)) != f(x), which for PATCH could be stated as: After PATCHing a resource with a patch document, subsequent PATCH calls to the same resource with the same patch document do change the resource.

To illustrate a non-idempotent PATCH, suppose there is a /users resource, and suppose that calling GET /users returns a list of users, currently:

[{ "id": 1, "username": "firstuser", "email": "[email protected]" }]

Rather than PATCHing /users/{id}, as in the OP's example, suppose the server allows PATCHing /users. Let's issue this PATCH request:

PATCH /users
[{ "op": "add", "username": "newuser", "email": "[email protected]" }]

Our patch document instructs the server to add a new user called newuser to the list of users. After calling this the first time, GET /users would return:

[{ "id": 1, "username": "firstuser", "email": "[email protected]" },
 { "id": 2, "username": "newuser", "email": "[email protected]" }]

Now, if we issue the exact same PATCH request as above, what happens? (For the sake of this example, let's assume that the /users resource allows duplicate usernames.) The "op" is "add", so a new user is added to the list, and a subsequent GET /users returns:

[{ "id": 1, "username": "firstuser", "email": "[email protected]" },
 { "id": 2, "username": "newuser", "email": "[email protected]" },
 { "id": 3, "username": "newuser", "email": "[email protected]" }]

The /users resource has changed again, even though we issued the exact same PATCH against the exact same endpoint. If our PATCH is f(x), f(f(x)) is not the same as f(x), and therefore, this particular PATCH is not idempotent.

Although PATCH isn't guaranteed to be idempotent, there's nothing in the PATCH specification to prevent you from making all PATCH operations on your particular server idempotent. RFC 5789 even anticipates advantages from idempotent PATCH requests:

A PATCH request can be issued in such a way as to be idempotent, which also helps prevent bad outcomes from collisions between two PATCH requests on the same resource in a similar time frame.

In Dan's example, his PATCH operation is, in fact, idempotent. In that example, the /users/1 entity changed between our PATCH requests, but not because of our PATCH requests; it was actually the Post Office's different patch document that caused the zip code to change. The Post Office's different PATCH is a different operation; if our PATCH is f(x), the Post Office's PATCH is g(x). Idempotence states that f(f(f(x))) = f(x), but makes no guarantes about f(g(f(x))).

Everyone else has answered the PUT vs PATCH. I was just going to answer what part of the title of the original question asks: "... in REST API real life scenarios". In the real world, this happened to me with internet application that had a RESTful server and a relational database with a Customer table that was "wide" (about 40 columns). I mistakenly used PUT but had assumed it was like a SQL Update command and had not filled out all the columns. Problems: 1) Some columns were optional (so blank was valid answer), 2) many columns rarely changed, 3) some columns the user was not allowed to change such as time stamp of Last Purchase Date, 4) one column was a free-form text "Comments" column that users diligently filled with half-page customer services comments like spouses name to ask about OR usual order, 5) I was working on an internet app at time and there was worry about packet size.

The disadvantage of PUT is that it forces you to send a large packet of info (all columns including the entire Comments column, even though only a few things changed) AND multi-user issue of 2+ users editing the same customer simultaneously (so last one to press Update wins). The disadvantage of PATCH is that you have to keep track on the view/screen side of what changed and have some intelligence to send only the parts that changed. Patch's multi-user issue is limited to editing the same column(s) of same customer.

TLDR - Dumbed Down Version

PUT => Set all new attributes for an existing resource.

PATCH => Partially update an existing resource (not all attributes required).