Forum Discussion

angela's avatar
angela
Catalyst II
1 year ago
Solved

Editing an item via REST API without item id. Can we specify a WHERE attribute?

Hi community, I want to edit a custom item in Innovator via REST API. Typically the command looks like this: PATCH {base url}/Part(’16AA95A80DEB4B56BD8BA9BC509EAF0C’) My 2nd software that shal...
REST API
  • angela's avatar
    angela
    5 months ago

    Thanks Bryan and Daan for your feedback! Are you really sure this approach works when performing an edit? Yes, of course, using a filter sounds absolutely reasonable - but here´s the reality….😄

    I get the same error when using PUT. I don´t have a collection. It´s a blank database with exactly one CAD item. 
    GET works fine.

    My current workaround is a custom Method. In general I started to prefer custom Methods for REST call. They allow much more control and validation.
    And it´s maybe a good thing that PATCH behaves this way. This way people only can destroy one item at a time. That´s a big plus! :)

angela's avatar
angela
Catalyst II
5 months ago

Thanks Bryan and Daan for your feedback! Are you really sure this approach works when performing an edit? Yes, of course, using a filter sounds absolutely reasonable - but here´s the reality….😄

I get the same error when using PUT. I don´t have a collection. It´s a blank database with exactly one CAD item. 
GET works fine.

My current workaround is a custom Method. In general I started to prefer custom Methods for REST call. They allow much more control and validation.
And it´s maybe a good thing that PATCH behaves this way. This way people only can destroy one item at a time. That´s a big plus! :)

  • eli_donahue's avatar
    eli_donahue
    Community Manager
    5 months ago

    After a bit of digging into the OData 4.0 spec and playing around in Postman, it seems like this may be a limitation of OData itself. I even tried using a batch request to get and update an item, but that's not a viable option due to the nature of OData batch/change sets. That leaves two options:

    1. Two requests from the client - one to get the id and another to make the PATCH
    2. One request to execute a server method that performs all the logic you need

     

    I'll ask around tomorrow to see if our internal OData experts have any other ideas, but at the moment it sounds like you're already on the best track.

    Edit: Does your client system allow you to define a callback function/operation? If so, maybe you could have the callback use the response from the inital request to send your PATCH request.