On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 2:59 PM, Aurélien Bénel <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Paul, > >> I just posted an informational Internet-Draft regarding a JSON media >> type to support HTTP PATCH partial modifications > > Thanks for sharing, this is really interesting. > > However, as far as I understand REST (applied to HTTP), the major pros of > "transferring states" instead of procedure calls is that : > - GET is safe, > - PUT and DELETE are idempotent. > > Those 2 properties have really important impacts on scaling. > > Of course you can PATCH but this is not RESTful... and then, you don't get > benefits from Fielding's architecture... > > Regards, > > Aurélien
In the end the HTTP part shouldn't be part of the specification. On the other hand, there's nothing inherently wrong with the PATCH verb or applying a diff in response to a PUT. This is merely an attempt at reciprocating the byte-range functionality for writes.
