Patching with Partial Updates

This document details how the SCIM component processes patch requests, and the commands it generates to be passed into the PartialUpdate method on IScimStore.

Patch Requests

For your store to be able to handle patch requests, you will need to process a collection of PatchCommands. The PatchCommand object will contain the type of operation that it represents, either Add, Remove or Replace. For Add and Replace commands, there will be a Value property that contains the value to be used in the operation and the Path property, which represents the property that needs to be modified on the resource.

The Path in a PatchCommand is a PathExpression, containing a collection of AttributePathExpression that makes up the path of the property the patch command relates to. By default, the SCIM component will output patch commands that always have the Path property set, even if the incoming request omits it. This is to avoid having implementers of PartialUpdate implement two paths for modifying a resource.

Default Behaviour

{
    "op": "replace",
    "value": {
        "name.givenName": "newGivenName"
    }
}

{
    "op": "replace",
    "path": "name",
    "value": {
        "givenName": "newGivenName"
    }
}

Will both produce a PatchCommand that can represented like the following

{
    "path": "urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:core:2.0:User:name:givenName"
    "value": "newGivenName"
}

Whole Object Replacements

To change this behaviour, set the EnableWholeObjectPatchCommands flag to true in the ScimServiceProviderConfigOptions object passed into AddScimServiceProvider. When set to true, patch requests without a path will generate a PatchCommand who's Value property is an instance of the Resource with the relevant properties set. As an example, the following replace command:

{
    "op": "replace",
    "value": {
        ...
        "name": {
            ...
            "familyName": "family"
            ...
        },
        "userName": "userName"
        ...
    }
}

Will output a PatchCommand ressembling the following representation:

{
    "op": "replace",
    "value": {
        ...
        "name": {
            ...
            "familyName": "family"
            ...
        },
        "userName": "userName"
        ...
    }
}

When you receive this PatchCommand you will have to check which properties have been updated on the Value object and modify the Resource using these.