JSONAPI Delete Relationship

Question

JSONAPI spec specifies the way to delete a relationships is via a PATCH request with the following body:

{ "data": null }

However, I don't see any way of doing this with the JSONAPI library by Google .

When ever I try to pass that body, I get the error:

data is not a jsonapi representation

which comes from this line in the source.

The thing is, I see nothing in unmarshalNode or UnmarshalPayload that handles the fact that data is null . Further more, because this is a generic recover the actual error is a nil reference error, because it assumes data exists with something.

Is there any way of actually doing a PATCH request with null data?

Answer 1

I don't have any experience with the GO JSONAPI Client Library you are referencing, but I do know that there are two ways of clearing a one-to-one relationship which means you might be able to use the second way as a workaround if the first way is not working for you:

1. Using the relationships endpoint

Updating One-To-One Relationships States that you can update a relationship using a PATCH request to a specific resource's (/article/1) relationships endpoint , ie /articles/1/ relationships /author

It is in this scenario that you can clear the relationship using the example you provided above:

PATCH /articles/1/relationships/author
{ "data": null }

So while I assume you are doing this right, you may want to double-check your path when using Google's library to make sure it is correct.

2. Using normal endpoints

This the other way of updating relationships, where you supply the entire resource object of the resource you are updating rather than just a data member with resource identifier objects. While this method seems more catered to updating multiple relationships at once or both a resource's relationships and attributes in the same request, it might be a good workaround here if the Google library has an issue doing the first way. This part of the spec shows that to update a relationship in this scenario, you need to make a PATCH request to a regular endpoint , with a resource object as the primary data. While the example the spec provides doesn't show a request clearing a relationship here, I would assume it would look like this:

PATCH /articles/1
{
  "data": {
    "type": "articles",
    "id": "1",
    "relationships": {
      "author": {
        "data": null
      }
    }
  }
}

Hopefully this can work for you.

Best of luck!