Complete Guide and Examples for Handling RESTful API PUT Requests in PHP

M66 2025-06-15

How to Handle RESTful API PUT Requests in PHP

In web development, RESTful APIs are commonly used for client-server communication. PUT requests are generally used to update existing resources. This article explains the key steps to handle PUT requests in PHP and provides concrete code examples to help you master this skill quickly.

Understanding the Characteristics of PUT Requests

PUT requests are used to replace the complete representation of a resource. Unlike POST requests which may partially update a resource, PUT requires the client to send the full new content of the resource, which the server then replaces the original resource with. Therefore, when handling a PUT request, it is important to accurately receive and save all data sent by the client.

Key Steps to Handle PUT Requests

Validate the Request Method Before processing the request, first check if the method is PUT; otherwise, return a 405 error response indicating "Method Not Allowed." You can use PHP’s $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] to check this.
Retrieve Request Data Obtain the raw request body by reading file_get_contents('php://input'), then decode it using json_decode() into a PHP array or object. If decoding fails, the request data is invalid, so return a 400 error.
Execute Resource Update Based on business requirements, save the retrieved data into the database or other storage. The example uses a function called updateResource() to perform the update logic.
Return Response If successful, return HTTP status 200 with a success message; if failed, return status 500 with an error message.

PHP Example Code

<?php
if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] !== 'PUT') {
    http_response_code(405);
    echo json_encode(['error' => 'Invalid request method']);
    exit();
}
<p>$requestData = json_decode(file_get_contents('php://input'), true);<br>
if ($requestData === null) {<br>
http_response_code(400);<br>
echo json_encode(['error' => 'Invalid request data']);<br>
exit();<br>
}</p>
<p>$result = updateResource($requestData);<br>
if ($result === false) {<br>
http_response_code(500);<br>
echo json_encode(['error' => 'Error updating resource']);<br>
exit();<br>
}</p>
<p>http_response_code(200);<br>
echo json_encode(['message' => 'Resource updated successfully']);</p>
<p>function updateResource($data)<br>
{<br>
// Perform update operation here, e.g. writing data to the database<br>
// ...</p>

}

Conclusion

By following these steps, you can implement a simple and practical PUT request handler. The key is to validate the request method, properly parse input data, execute update logic, and return appropriate responses. Depending on your needs, you can further extend the implementation with data validation, error handling, and security measures to build a more robust RESTful API.

json_decode