Difference between `merge_patch` and `update`

[jdumas]

Hi,

I was wondering what is the difference between j1.merge_patch(j2) and j1.update(j2)? The two methods seem to have a similar behavior, but I am not sure exactly how they differ (they appear to have different purposes). I was using merge_patch() for a while because I was not aware of the update() method, so maybe it would also make sense to update the doc so they can point at each other (even if it's a warning to say they should not be confused).

[nlohmann]

• JSON Merge Patch (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7396) is an official standard, whereas update is just a function that combines JSON objects.
• JSON Merge Patch allows to delete, whereas update would change existing values to null.
• Both only work on objects, whereas JSON Patch (https://github.com/nlohmann/json#json-pointer-and-json-patch) works on any JSON type.

[jdumas]

Thanks for the clarification!

[jdumas]

Ok looks like one other important difference that should be pointed out is that update() is not recursive, and will not update/merge nested json dictionaries, whereas merge_patch() will.