Consuming APIs - PUT PATCH and DELETE

00:00 PUT, PATCH and DELETE. Beyond GET and POST, requests provide support for all the other HTTP methods you would use with a REST API. PUT asks the server to process the resource that is sent to the API, and it allows the creation or updating of a resource. It’s most commonly used when updating an existing resource.

00:22 The code you’ll see on screen sends a PUT request to update an existing to-do with new data. Any data sent with a PUT request will completely replace the existing values of the to-do.

00:33 You’ll use the same JSON placeholder endpoint you use with GET and POST, but this time you’ll append 10 to the end of the URL.

00:41 This tells the REST API which to-do you’d like to update.

00:53 First, you call requests.get() to view the contents of the existing to-do.

01:03 Next, you call requests.put() with new JSON data to replace the existing to-do’s values.

01:23 You can see the new values when you call response.json(). Successful PUT requests will always return 200 instead of 201 because you aren’t creating a new resource, but just updating an existing one.

01:41 PATCH is another HTTP method, and it’s similar to PUT. Once more, it requests that the server processes the resource sent to the API, but it allows partial modification of a resource.

01:53 Here you’ll use requests.patch() to modify the value of a specific field on an existing to-do. PATCH differs from PUT in that it doesn’t completely replace the existing resource.

02:03 It only modifies the value set in the JSON sent with the request. You’ll use the same to-do from the last example to try out requests.patch(), and here are the current values.

02:16 Now you can update title with a new value.

02:28 When you call response.json(), you can see that title has been updated to `Mow Lawn. DELETE` is used when you want to remove a resource using an API.

02:40 Note that depending on the way the API is created, this may just mean removing access to a resource such as an image or other uploaded file rather than actually deleting the file from the server.

02:53 Here’s the code to remove a to-do. You call requests.delete() with an API URL that contains the ID for the to-do you’d like to remove. This sends a DELETE request to the REST API, which then removes the matching resource.

03:09 After deleting the resource, the API sends back an empty JSON object indicating that the resource has been deleted. The

03:20 requests library is a great tool for working with REST APIs and an indispensable part of your Python toolkit. In the next section, you’ll change gears and consider what it takes to design a REST API.