Sending a HTTP PATCH in JavaScript (ECMAScript 2021+) rules

andre · January 10, 2023, 12:20am

I need to send a HTTP PATCH to update an external resource from a JavaScript (ECMAScript 2021+) rule. The actions.HTTP class doesn’t support the PATCH method, so what would be the recommended way to perform the request directly?

rlkoshak · January 10, 2023, 2:30pm

You’ll probably need to either import and use the raw Java HTTP classes or call out to curl using executeCommandLine. XmlHttpRequest and other similar JavaScript HTTP classes I don’t think will work in a rules context, but you could give those a try too.

andre · January 11, 2023, 10:11pm

Thanks @rlkoshak - I’ve tested both XmlHttpRequest() and fetch() - neither are available as I believe they are provided by browsers or node as appropriate.

I’ve worked around the need for now using PUT - but it would be ideal to be an option in the HTTP Binding to make it more complete. I’ll log a feature request in the Github project.

andre · January 11, 2023, 10:21pm

github.com/openhab/openhab-addons

[http] Support HTTP PATCH in the binding so jsscripting can utilise this method

opened 10:21PM - 11 Jan 23 UTC

alackmann

enhancement

The HTTP binding currently supports GET, POST, PUT, DELETE and the related metho…d calls via [jsscripting](https://openhab.github.io/openhab-js/actions.html#.HTTP). This is missing the not often used, but sometimes critical `PATCH` method that is commonly used to make updates to a collection without replacing all it's contents. Without this method, workarounds can sometimes be found by using POST or PUT, but these risk overwriting server-side data that OpenHAB is not aware of OR by shelling out to the O/S and using `curl` which isn't ideal. Now that we have more featureful scripting languages like JS and Ruby etc, I expect scripting developers will be more ambitious with the types of things they can achieve. To support this, it would be ideal if HTTP could be extended to support PATCH to avoid these messy workarounds and make the Binding more complete.