PATCH Method for HTTP
RFC 5789
| Document | Type |
RFC - Proposed Standard
(March 2010; Errata)
Was draft-dusseault-http-patch (individual in app area)
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Last updated | 2015-10-14 | ||
| Stream | IETF | ||
| Formats | plain text pdf html bibtex | ||
| Stream | WG state | (None) | |
| Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
| IESG | IESG state | RFC 5789 (Proposed Standard) | |
| Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| Telechat date | |||
| Responsible AD | Alexey Melnikov | ||
| Send notices to | mnot@mnot.net | ||
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) L. Dusseault
Request for Comments: 5789 Linden Lab
Category: Standards Track J. Snell
ISSN: 2070-1721 March 2010
PATCH Method for HTTP
Abstract
Several applications extending the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
require a feature to do partial resource modification. The existing
HTTP PUT method only allows a complete replacement of a document.
This proposal adds a new HTTP method, PATCH, to modify an existing
HTTP resource.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5789.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Dusseault & Snell Standards Track [Page 1]
RFC 5789 HTTP PATCH March 2010
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................2
2. The PATCH Method ................................................2
2.1. A Simple PATCH Example .....................................4
2.2. Error Handling .............................................5
3. Advertising Support in OPTIONS ..................................7
3.1. The Accept-Patch Header ....................................7
3.2. Example OPTIONS Request and Response .......................7
4. IANA Considerations .............................................8
4.1. The Accept-Patch Response Header ...........................8
5. Security Considerations .........................................8
6. References ......................................................9
6.1. Normative References .......................................9
6.2. Informative References .....................................9
Appendix A. Acknowledgements .....................................10
1. Introduction
This specification defines the new HTTP/1.1 [RFC2616] method, PATCH,
which is used to apply partial modifications to a resource.
A new method is necessary to improve interoperability and prevent
errors. The PUT method is already defined to overwrite a resource
with a complete new body, and cannot be reused to do partial changes.
Otherwise, proxies and caches, and even clients and servers, may get
confused as to the result of the operation. POST is already used but
without broad interoperability (for one, there is no standard way to
discover patch format support). PATCH was mentioned in earlier HTTP
specifications, but not completely defined.
In this document, the key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED",
"SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY",
and "OPTIONAL" are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
Furthermore, this document uses the ABNF syntax defined in Section
2.1 of [RFC2616].
2. The PATCH Method
The PATCH method requests that a set of changes described in the
request entity be applied to the resource identified by the Request-
URI. The set of changes is represented in a format called a "patch
document" identified by a media type. If the Request-URI does not
point to an existing resource, the server MAY create a new resource,
depending on the patch document type (whether it can logically modify
a null resource) and permissions, etc.
Dusseault & Snell Standards Track [Page 2]
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