Creating/Updating API Fundraisers

There are two patterns you can utilize in our fundraisers API — creating via POST and updating via PATCH or what we call placing via PUT. This article will explain the difference and give you an idea of which you should use for your application.

POST only creates new fundraisers. When using POST, specifying an ID is optional. If an ID is not spcified, one is generated for you and it is up to you to save it in order to reference your fundraiser in the future. If you specify an ID that has already been taken, the fundraiser will fail to create and an error message will be returned.

PATCH only updates existing fundraisers. Specifying an ID is required to use PATCH. If a fundraiser does not exist with the given ID, the request will fail and return an error. PATCH will work with your IDs or autogenerated ones. PATCH will accept partial updates where only the attributes that are specified will be updated.

PUT can create new fundraisers or overwrite existing ones. Specifying an ID is required to use PUT and is idempotent, so unless there is an error in your data, it should always work. If a fundraiser exists with the given ID, it will be overwritten. If it does not, it will be created. PUT will work with your IDs or autogenerated ones. Important: parameters sent to PUT must be complete. Unlike PATCH, partial updates will reset all unspecified attributes for the fundraiser.

Use POST and PATCH if you want to be specific when creating or updating fundraisers and want to get an error message when trying to overwrite existing fundraisers or update non-existant fundraisers. Use PUT if you don’t care about overwriting existing fundraisers and want guarenteed success with valid parameters.

Note

The ID can be specified as a parameter in POST and must be included as part of URL in PUT and PATCH.