Patch verb
In computing, the PATCH method is a request method supported by the Hypertext Transfer Protocol protocol for making partial changes to an existing resource. The PATCH method provides an entity containing a list of changes to be applied to the resource requested using the HTTP Uniform Resource Identifier. The list of changes are supplied in the form of a PATCH document. If the requested resource does not exist then the server may create the resource depending on the PATCH document media type and permissions. The changes described in the PATCH document must be semantically well defined but can have a different media type than the resource being patched. Frameworks such as XML, JSON can be used in describing the changes in the PATCH document.
History of PATCH
As per the semantics defined in the HTTP protocol, the GET, PUT, and POST methods need to use a full representation of the resource. The PUT method which can be used for resource creation or replacement is idempotent and can be used only for full updates. The edit forms used in conventional Ruby on Rails application need to create new resources by applying partial updates to a parent resource. Due to this requirement, the PATCH method was added to the HTTP protocol in 2010.PUT vs PATCH vs POST
is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web. It is a request-response protocol which helps users communicate with the server to perform CRUD operations. HTTP supports a number of request methods such as PUT, POST and PATCH to create or update resources.The main difference between the PUT and PATCH method is that the PUT method uses the request URI to supply a modified version of the requested resource which replaces the original version of the resource, whereas the PATCH method supplies a set of instructions to modify the resource. If the PATCH document is larger than the size of the new version of the resource sent by the method then the method is preferred.
The POST method can be used for sending partial updates to a resource. The main difference between the POST and PATCH methods is that the POST method can only be used when it is written to support the applications or the applications support its semantics whereas the PATCH method can be used in a generic way and does not require application support. If the outcome of using the PATCH method is not known then the POST method is preferred.
Patching resources
The PATCH method is atomic. Either all the changes specified by the PATCH method are applied or none of the changes are applied by the server. There are many ways of checking whether a patch was applied successfully. For example, the 'diff' utility can be applied to the older version and newer version of a file to find the differences between them.A cached PATCH response is considered stale. It can only be used for the GET and HEAD requests that may follow the PATCH request.
The entity headers in the PATCH document are only applicable to the PATCH document and cannot be applied to the requested resource.
There is no standard format for the PATCH document and it is different for different types of resources. The server has to check whether the PATCH document received is appropriate for the requested resource.
A JSON Patch document would look like
"op" represents the operation performed on the resource. "count" represents the resource being modified. "value" represents the amount being added to the existing resource. Before applying the changes in the PATCH document, the server has to check whether the PATCH document received is appropriate for the requested resource. If the PATCH request succeeds then it returns a 204 response.
A XML PATCH document would look like
ABC Road
The element
Example
A simple PATCH request examplePATCH /example.txt HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
Content-Type: application/example
: "c0b42b66e"
Content-Length: 120
is the patch document containing all the changes that need to be made on the resource example.txt
Successful PATCH response to existing text file:
HTTP/1.1 204 No Content
Content-Location: /example.txt
ETag: "c0b42b66f"
The response 204 means that the request was processed successfully.
PATCH method for Ruby
The PATCH method is used in Rails 4.0+ in the form of update_attributes method. Apache and Phusion Passenger are some of the web servers that support the PATCH method. The PATCH requests to '/users/:id' route in config/routes.rb are directed to the update action in UserController in Rails 4.0.Trade-offs between PUT and PATCH
Using the PUT method consumes more bandwidth as compared to the PATCH method when only a few changes need to be applied to a resource. But when the PATCH method is used, it usually involves fetching the resource from the server, comparing the original and new files, creating and sending a diff file. On the server side, the server has to read the diff file and make the modifications. This involves a lot of overhead compared to the PUT method.On the other hand, the method requires a to be performed before the and it is difficult to ensure that the resource is not modified between the and requests.
Caution
The PATCH method is not "safe" in the sense of RFC 2616: it may modify resources, not necessarily limited to those mentioned in the URI.The PATCH method is not idempotent. It can be made idempotent by using a conditional request. When a client makes a conditional request to a resource, the request succeeds only if the resource has not been updated since the client last accessed that resource. This also helps in preventing corruption of the resource since some updates to a resource can only be performed starting from a certain base point.