It seems I'm going to have to eat my own hat:
http://intertwingly.net/blog/2008/02/15/Embrace-Extend-then-Innovate
One of the authors of "RESTful Web Services" whose book I was quoting comes
out against using HTTP PUT for partial updates. He doesn't actually advocate
the use of HTTP PATCH. He questions the need for partial updates altogether.
I find
http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-dusseault-http-patch-11.html
very confusing in the sense that it talks about "patch documents" yet never
defines any or gives any examples. Sam Ruby writes "My concern is with
clients coding with to the assumption as to how the server works. That’s
called coupling." I get that, but I fail to see how HTTP PATCH addresses
that at all. Clients will *still* make assumptions about how the server
works (for both PUT or PATCH) unless the server uses a format that discusses
its behavior explicitly. Again, I don't see how using PATCH instead of PUT
solves this problem. I am honestly interested in a clear explanation.
BTW: Jersey doesn't seem to support HTTP PATCH out-of-the-box. I assume it's
easy to provide this support ourselves?
Thanks,
Gili
Gili wrote:
>
>
>
> Paul Sandoz wrote:
>>
>>>> That would be against the semantics of PUT.
>>>>
>>>
>>> According to who or what?
>>
>> http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc2616.html#PUT
>>
>> Which is why the following draft has been created:
>>
>> http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-dusseault-http-patch-11.html
>>
>
> Can you please quote the specific sentences from
> http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc2616.html#PUT touch upon this topic? I
> read the entire section and didn't see any of it to conflict with what I'm
> doing. I understand that the PATCH document alleges that there is a
> problem with what I'm doing, but frankly he doesn't provide any proof of
> this. It's not clear how using PUT for incomplete updates could cause
> problems for proxies.
>
> Also, http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-dusseault-http-patch-11.html
> is a draft that expired on July 2008. I'm not sure what its status is as
> of today.
>
> Gili
>
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