Hoot Back-End Update Hoot

Learning objective: By the end of this lesson, students will be able build a route that updates a single hoot in the database before issuing this updated object as a JSON response to the client.

Overview

In this section, we will create an update route to find and update a single hoot. This route will be a PUT request on /hoots/<hoot_id>, returning a JSON response with a single updated hoot from the database.

We will be following these specs when building the route:

CRUD Action: UPDATE
Method: PUT
Path: /hoots/<hoot_id>
Response: JSON
Success Status Code: 200 Ok
Success Response Body: A JSON object with the updated hoot.
Error Status Code: 500 Internal Server Error
Error Response Body: A JSON object with an error key and a message describing the error.

Define the route

Our route will listen for PUT requests on '/hoots/<hoot_id>':

PUT /hoots/<hoot_id>

We’ll make use of our @token_required decorator, as only a logged in user should be able to update a hoot.

Add the following:

@hoots_blueprint.route('/hoots/<hoot_id>', methods=['PUT'])
@token_required

🏆 Any route that requires auth should include the @token_required decorator. These are our protected routes.

Code the controller function

Let’s breakdown what we’ll accomplish inside our controller function.

Our function will use the connection cursor to execute the following SQL query:

UPDATE hoots SET title = %s, text = %s, category = %s WHERE hoots.id = %s RETURNING *

The new twist in this route will be determining whether the user making the request is, in fact, the hoot’s original creator!

This will require two separate queries:

One to get the hoot from the database and check who the author is,
And the second to actually update the hoot.

Add the following to hoots_blueprint.py:

@hoots_blueprint.route('/hoots/<hoot_id>', methods=['PUT'])
@token_required
def update_hoot(hoot_id):
    try:
        updated_hoot_data = request.json
        connection = get_db_connection()
        cursor = connection.cursor(cursor_factory=psycopg2.extras.RealDictCursor)
        cursor.execute("SELECT * FROM hoots WHERE hoots.id = %s", (hoot_id,))
        hoot_to_update = cursor.fetchone()
        if hoot_to_update is None:
            return jsonify({"error": "hoot not found"}), 404
        connection.commit()
        if hoot_to_update["author"] is not g.user["id"]:
            return jsonify({"error": "Unauthorized"}), 401
        cursor.execute("UPDATE hoots SET title = %s, text = %s, category = %s WHERE hoots.id = %s RETURNING *",
                        (updated_hoot_data["title"], updated_hoot_data["text"], updated_hoot_data["category"], hoot_id))
        updated_hoot = cursor.fetchone()
        connection.commit()
        connection.close()
        return jsonify({"hoot": updated_hoot}), 200
    except Exception as error:
        return jsonify({"error": str(error)}), 500

Test the route in Postman

Now that we have the route, let’s test it with Postman.

We’ll do this by sending a PUT request to the following URL:

http://127.0.0.1:5000/hoots/2

💡 Be sure to update this with a hoot id value that exists in your database!

You should see the updated hoot as a response.