Update with Null values

[Alex Ugol]

Hi,

I'm designing a RESTfull API, and would like to know your opinion regarding null values while updating a resource.

When getting null values in Update requests, should I update the requested properties to null (assuming they are not mandatory), or consider them as not passed for update? 

Example:

{

   "name":"alex",

   "info": null

}

Update the info property to null? Or ignore the update on that property? What is the convention / better approach?

Thanks,

Alex

[Jørn Wildt]

See for instance http://soabits.blogspot.dk/2013/01/http-put-patch-or-post-partial-updates.html for a discussion.

/Jørn

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[Andrew Braae]

If by "update request" you mean a PATCH operation with a media type of application/merge-patch+json, as per https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7386, then the answer is that the value for "info" is removed.

PATCH /target HTTP/1.1

Host: example.org
Content-Type: application/merge-patch+json

[Chris Mullins]

I would expect that to be read as "The new value of info is null". 

The Principal of Least Surprise applies here as and doing what devs intuitively expect is certainly a good thing. 

Cheers,

Chris