PATCH for partial updates in Rest API - Mini Project: Build & Apply

PATCH for Partial Updates in a REST API

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple REST API for managing a list of books in a library. Each book has a title, author, and year published.Sometimes, users want to update only some details of a book, not all. For example, they might want to change just the year published without changing the title or author.

🎯 Goal: Create a REST API endpoint that uses the PATCH method to update only the fields provided in the request for a specific book.This means if the user sends only the year, only that field changes, and the others stay the same.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary called books with three books, each having keys title, author, and year.

Create a variable called book_id set to 2 to represent the book to update.

Write code to update only the fields provided in a dictionary called update_data for the book with book_id.

Print the updated book details after applying the partial update.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Partial updates are common in real REST APIs where clients want to change only some details without sending the full data again.

💼 Career

Understanding PATCH requests and partial updates is important for backend developers building APIs that are efficient and user-friendly.

1

Create the initial books data

Create a dictionary called books with these exact entries: 1 maps to {'title': '1984', 'author': 'George Orwell', 'year': 1949}, 2 maps to {'title': 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'author': 'Harper Lee', 'year': 1960}, and 3 maps to {'title': 'The Great Gatsby', 'author': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald', 'year': 1925}.

Rest API

# Create the books dictionary with 3 books
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a dictionary with integer keys and dictionaries as values for each book.

2

Set the book ID to update

Create a variable called book_id and set it to 2 to represent the book that will be updated.

Rest API

books = {
    1: {'title': '1984', 'author': 'George Orwell', 'year': 1949},
    2: {'title': 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'author': 'Harper Lee', 'year': 1960},
    3: {'title': 'The Great Gatsby', 'author': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald', 'year': 1925}
}

# Set the book_id to 2
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the number 2 to the variable book_id.

3

Apply the partial update using PATCH logic

Create a dictionary called update_data with these exact entries: 'year': 1961. Then update only the fields in books[book_id] using update_data so that only the provided fields change.

Rest API

books = {
    1: {'title': '1984', 'author': 'George Orwell', 'year': 1949},
    2: {'title': 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'author': 'Harper Lee', 'year': 1960},
    3: {'title': 'The Great Gatsby', 'author': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald', 'year': 1925}
}

book_id = 2

# Create update_data with 'year': 1961
# Update books[book_id] with update_data
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the dictionary update() method to apply partial changes.

4

Print the updated book details

Write a print statement to display the updated book details for books[book_id].

Rest API

books = {
    1: {'title': '1984', 'author': 'George Orwell', 'year': 1949},
    2: {'title': 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'author': 'Harper Lee', 'year': 1960},
    3: {'title': 'The Great Gatsby', 'author': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald', 'year': 1925}
}

book_id = 2

update_data = {'year': 1961}
books[book_id].update(update_data)

# Print the updated book details
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(books[book_id]) to show the updated book.