PATCH : HTTP Method RFC 5789

"In a PUT request, the enclosed entity is considered to be a modified version of the resource stored on the origin server, and the client is requesting that the stored version be replaced. With PATCH, however, the enclosed entity contains a set of instructions describing how a resource currently residing on the origin server should be modified to produce a new version."

HTTP Patch Method is used to update the JSON Resource efficiently.

JSON Patch

JSON Example :

{
  "name": "abc123",
  "colour": "blue",
  "count": 4
}

and you want to update the “count” member’s value to “5”.
Now, you could just PUT the entire thing back with the updated value, but that requires a recent GET of its state, can get heavyweight (especially for mobile clients),

For these and other reasons, many APIs define a convention for POSTing to resources that allows partial updates. E.g.

POST /widgets/abc123?action=incrementCount

PATCH /widgets/abc123 HTTP/1.1
Host: api.example.com
Content-Length: ...
Content-Type: application/json-patch

[
  {"replace": "/count", "value": 5}

]

Easy to understand, and even write by hand. If it succeeds, the response can be as simple as:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/plain
Connection: close


Your patch succeeded. Yay!