how to update an object without sending the complete json of the entity

Question

I am currently using "Spring boot".

Requirement is to make an endpoint to update an entity such as a user , but I do not want to send all the "Json" of the object because it has 4 related tables and grows a lot in size.

Is it possible to send selected fields to update instead whole "json" of the object?

Answer 1

You could create an API with HTTP PATCH method and can send the fields which need to be updated.

When we need to replace an existing Resource entirely, they can use PUT. When we are doing a partial update, we can use HTTP PATCH.

Answer 2

If you referring to update the database with partial information you can use: @DynamicUpdate(HibernateConfig.dynamicUpdate) on the entity which only updates changed fields. This may cause a degradation in performance because the updates to the DB uses different statements which make it hard on the DB itself to cache the execution plans.