PUT and PATCH in RESTful APIs

Both PUT and PATCH are HTTP methods used in RESTful APIs to update resources, but they have some key differences:

PUT

• Purpose: Used to update a resource or create a resource if it does not exist.
• Operation: Replaces the entire resource with the new data provided.
• Idempotency: PUT requests are idempotent, meaning multiple identical requests will have the same effect as a single request.
• Example: If we have a user resource and we send a PUT request to update the user’s information, we need to provide the entire user object, not just the fields we want to update.

PUT /users/123
{
  "name": "John Doe",
  "email": "john.doe@example.com",
  "age": 30
}

PATCH

• Purpose: Used to apply partial updates to a resource.
• Operation: Only updates the fields provided in the request, leaving the rest of the resource unchanged.
• Idempotency: PATCH requests are not necessarily idempotent, meaning multiple identical requests could have different effects.
• Example: If we want to update just the email of a user, we can send a PATCH request with only the email field.

PATCH /users/123
{
  "email": "john.newemail@example.com"
}

In summary, use PUT when we need to replace the entire resource and PATCH when we only need to update specific fields.