On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 3:59 PM, Aurélien Bénel <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear Paul, > >> On the other hand, there's nothing inherently wrong with the PATCH verb > > True, PATCH could be idempotent... It just depends on your patch format. > > I just had a look at your patch operations specification: > - When you add or remove a key/value, this is idempotent. > - However, when you add or remove an array element based on an index, this is > not. > > > Regards, > > Aurélien
Ah, fair point. I should've said there's nothing inherently wrong with submitting a diff via POST (not PUT). And in fact RFC 5789 says that PATCH is not safe or idempotent. On the other hand, I have no idea how that has anything to do with REST. Of specific note, Fielding himself calls out the PATCH verb as an acceptable extension of the underlying protocol for a REST API [1]. [1] http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven
