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@tugberkugurlu
Created October 9, 2012 08:16
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Assuming you have the following object:

public class Person { 
    
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Surname { get; set; }
    public int Age { get; set; }
}

and got a PATCH request as below:

[{"replace": "/name", "value": "tugberk"}]

and assuming we have a json-patch formatter. Wouldn't you get the following result?

public class PeopleController : ApiController { 

    //new Person { Name = "tugberk", Surname = null, Age = 0 }
    public Person PatchPerson(Person person) { 
        
        //...
    }
}
@benfoster
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No, the controller should have a Patch operation that accepts a command implementing a common base class / interface e.g. IPatchCommand. This is what you would work with in the media type formatter (like I do with IPublicationCommand in AtomPub).

@tugberkugurlu
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Ok, so IPatchCommand is some sort of a Dictionary or has a Dictionary property? If so, it seems doable to me as I indicated that it would be possible to do this with dynamic or JToken.

@benfoster
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It would have a collection of PatchingOperation objects like the RavenDB API. The Media Type Formatters job will be simply to know how to create one of these objects based on the JSON-Patch specification. It would be down to the logic in the controller to understand how to patch the object. This, in my opinion, is the tough part - translating a patch operation into a n update on an object.

@tugberkugurlu
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Yes, right. That's really the hard part and it would change depending on the data store system you use.

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