The right way to use Ajax to Update a Single field in a specific Object

Question

Is it possible to use Ajax to Update a Single field in a Specific Object? I have an postgres table with lots of records, I want to use a jquery Ajax request to update a single field in a specific object within that table. Can that be done without replacing or reposting the entire record?.

I want this (Gives me a 400 bad request error):

$.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: '/api/MyEndPoint/',
    data: {
        id: Specific_Record,
        Field_To_Update: New_Value, 
    }, 
    success: function(data){
        console.log( 'success, server says '+data);  
    }
});

Instead of this (which works):

$.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: '/api/MyEndPoint/',
    data: {
        id: Specific_Record,
        Field_To_Update: New_Value, 
        Field1: SameAsBefore, 
        Field2: SameAsBefore,  
        Field3: SameAsBefore,  
        ...  
        Field16: SameAsBefore, 
    }, 
    success: function(data){
        console.log( 'success, server says '+data);  
    }
});

*Note: I'm using Django, and could easily do this update in views.py but I want to use Javascript to avoid a page refresh.

Since I'm also using Django Rest Framework, would it be better for me to create a new endpoint that is specific to the field I want to update? ex: /api/DB_Table/Object_id/Field_to_Update

Thanks!

Answer 1

Yes, you can do this using the PATCH HTTP method and it is called a partial update in REST terminology. It is already implemented by default in DRF so you don't have to override any method for that. This is opposed to PUT which is a full update and will require that you add all required fields to the request unless yuou override the default behavior

Answer 2

I think you can in simplest form use the RetrieveUpdateAPIView generic view provided by Django RestFramework library

This will expose following apis :

GET : Return object

PATCH : Update the object data ( partially , as per convention)

PUT : Update the object data

Reference : https://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/generic-views/#retrieveupdateapiview

If you also want to support deleting object, then you can use RetrieveUpdateDestroyAPIView , this will support DELETE to delete object

Reference : https://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/generic-views/#retrieveupdatedestroyapiview