The HTTP method PUT means resource creation or replacement at some given URL.
Think files, for example. If you upload a file to S3 at some URL, you want either to create the file at that URL or replace an existing file if there's one. That is PUT.
Now let's say a web application has an
Invoicemodel with apaidflag that indicates whether the invoice has been paid. How do you set that flag in a RESTful way? Submittingpaid=1via PUT to/invoices/:iddoes not conform to the semantics, because such request would not be sending a complete representation of the invoice for replacement....
In practice, as you see, PATCH suits everyday web programming way better than PUT for updating resources. In Ruby on Rails it corresponds naturally to the way we use
update_attributesfor updating records.Thus, PATCH is going to be the primary method for updates in Rails 4.0.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
REST's fifth HTTP method: PATCH?
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Code Across America: A Week of Civic Innovation!
From February 24 through March 4, hundreds of passionate citizens around the country will come together to “Code Across America” – to make their cities even better. In over a dozen cities, there will be hackathons to build civic apps, “brigades” to deploy existing ones, unconferences to plan for the year ahead, and meetups to strengthen the community.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Daniel Dennett receives 2012 Erasmus Prize for cultural contributions.
"A lot of people want to keep science at bay," Dennett said. "I want to show them that all of these treasures are more wonderful when you show them how they work. I want to understand the mind and religion. All of these things are natural. There's got to be a natural as opposed to supernatural account for them."
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Your next workstation may be your phone.
Your next desktop could be a phone
Why carry two devices, when you could carry only one? Your next high-end smartphone has far more horsepower than you’ll need on a phone, and more than enough for a laptop. So we’ve brought Android together with Ubuntu, the world’s favourite free operating system, to give you a full productivity desktop that fits in your pocket. Android for the phone experience, Ubuntu for the desktop, all on one device, running at the same time.
So forget the office PC. Just dock your corporate phone and enjoy Ubuntu. Anywhere. One address book. One set of bookmarks. One place for your text messages and email. No more typing on a tiny screen when all you want is a keyboard and a mouse. Seamless integration of your desktop and mobile worlds. Brilliant.
Do Hackathons and Civic Hacking Matter? « Civic Innovations
All of these events, to one degree or another, helped to galvanize the local technology community in these cities and demonstrate that building software-based solutions with open government data (or helping to liberate such data from outdated government websites) is a highly valuable form of civic engagement.
Friday, February 17, 2012
The .0000063 Percent Election | The Nation
...electoral politics and the 2012 presidential election have become almost exclusively defined by the 1 percent. Or, to be more precise, the .0000063 percent. Those are the 196 individual donors who have provided nearly 80 percent of the money raised by super PACs in 2011 by giving $100,000 or more each.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Hack the vote: How #OpenSource will change our elections
After watching the documentary Hacking Democracy, I started researching how government uses voting technology to conduct elections. That’s how I learned about the work of Open Source Digital Voting Foundation.
I asked OSDV Co-Executive Director and Chief Development Officer Greg Miller to share what his organization is doing to make election software more open and secure and how others can help.
OpenStax Open Sources College Textbooks.
OpenStax College offers students free textbooks that meet scope and sequence requirements for most courses. These are peer-reviewed texts written by professional content developers. Adopt a book today for a turnkey classroom solution or modify it to suit your teaching approach. Free online and low-cost in print, OpenStax College books are built for today’s student budgets.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Adding to the deficit: Bush vs. Obama - The Washington Post
Since President Obama became chief executive, the national debt has risen almost $5 trillion. But how much of that was because of policies passed by Obama, and how much was caused by the financial crisis, the continuation of past policies and other effects? For this analysis, we worked with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities to attach a price tag to the legislation passed by Obama and his predecessor. George W. Bush’s major policies increased the debt by more than $5 trillion during his presidency. Obama has increased the debt by less than $1 trillion. Read related article.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Friday, February 3, 2012
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
CIO ≠ Chief Infrastructure Officer | Code for America
we need the “I” part of the CIO title to meaningfully relate to the provision of information services. We need municipal CIOs to spend less time on upgrading operating systems and deploying “thick” client software and more on the business of cities.