Differences and use cases of PUT and PATCH

[Greg_Korte]

First, I would like to thank all the participants in this community. You’ve made developing apps with Appsheet very manageable, and for the last few months I have lurked about having most, if not all, of my questions answered.

I’m curious about PUT and PATCH. Seems in my experience, PUT is used to update a complete record whereas PATCH is used to update partial records. Is this the case with Appsheet? Second, what are some use cases since the documentation mentions they are the rarer forms of editing records? Lastly, if using either PUT or PATCH, how should the Url be formed specifically when interacting with the AppSheet API, and how will it change the JSON body?

Thanks again. And happy to be here!

[GreenFlux · Accepted solution]

Greg_Korte:

I’m curious about PUT and PATCH. Seems in my experience, PUT is used to update a complete record whereas PATCH is used to update partial records. Is this the case with Appsheet?

These options are available for use with other APIs, when sending requests from AppSheet to an API that uses PUT/PATCH.

API calls to the AppSheet API only use POST, even for update/delete. Instead, the Action parameter in the URL indicates the operation type.

Greg_Korte:

Second, what are some use cases since the documentation mentions they are the rarer forms of editing records?

AppSheet could update rows in another service, like Hubspot, FreshDesk, Shopify, etc. PUT/PATCH are not used to make calls to AppSheet, only from the AppSheet API to other services.

Greg_Korte:

Lastly, if using either PUT or PATCH, how should the Url be formed specifically when interacting with the AppSheet API, and how will it change the JSON body?

Not applicable with API calls to AppSheet.

If sending PUT/PATCH requests from AppSheet to another service, the other service’s API documentation should answer this.

In general, the endpoint URL tends to be the same as POST (create record), but usually the record ID is added to the end for PUT/PATCH. It just depends on the other, API though.

[Greg_Korte]

Crystal clear! I appreciate the quick response.