CRUD Update Single item

Update types

There are two main types of updates to consider:

• partial: SHOULD be done using POST
  • in this case only a subset of the properties MUST be provided
• full: MUST be done using PUT
  • in this case ALL resource properties MUST be provided (for idempotency)

Target

To update a single item you SHOULD issue a POST or PUT request against the single item (e.g., .../v1/employees/123 to update employee 123).

Rules for the client

• SHOULD use POST for partial updates
• MAY use PUT for full updates (idempotent), see PUT
• MUST define the Content-Type header to specify the media type of the request body
• MUST set the If-Match header with the ETag value known by the client (see concurrency section for details)
  • makes it a conditional request

Rules for the server

• MUST return
  • Success: HTTP 200 (OK)
    • or HTTP 204 (No content) if not returning content in the body
  • Failure due to invalid ETag: 412 (Precondition Failed)
• SHOULD set the Last-Modified header to the last modification time stamp
• SHOULD set the ETag header to the current ETag value
• MAY consider using vendor-specific media types to give semantics about the data.