Rest API for supporting dual listbox

Question

I'm trying to figure out what my API route and HTTP method should be for supporting a dual list box (e.g. http://geodan.github.io/duallistbox/sample-100.html) Say, I have a collection, GET /employees which looks like:

[
  {'id': 1, 'name': 'Foo', 'selected': true},
  {'id': 2, 'name': 'Bar', 'selected': false}
]

where Foo would be in the list on the right and Bar would be on the left. If the action of moving the items from left to right (or vice-versa) in the dual list box only changes the value of 'selected', should I be using:

• JSON PATCH (items that moved) to /employees
• POST (items in the right list) to /employees/selected (GET /employees/selected doesn't exist)
• PATCH (items in the right list) to /employees/selected
• Some other method and route?

Edit: Note, I'm interested in bulk updates use case. Don't want to trigger an HTTP request after every user action.

Answer 1

You're updating the selected property on an employee resource.

So you can either:

PATCH /employees/:id with the correct value for selected if you support PATCH

or, if you don't want to support PATCH

PUT /employees/:id with the entire updated employee object.

Edit

If you want to bulk update then you are updating the collection. /employees - rather than a single resource.

Either PUT the entire collection with updated selected properties, which is a bit heavy handed,

Or PATCH the collection like so:

 [
 {
     "op": "replace",
     "path": "/1/selected",
     "value": true
 },
 {
     "op": "replace",
     "path": "/2/selected",
    "value": true
 }
 ]