this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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createOrUpdateMeeting() vs createMeeting(). Which one do you choose and why? (programming.dev)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by JokersPistol@programming.dev to c/experienced_devs@programming.dev
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Which one is easier to develop and work with (which saves the most time)? Which one would you go for? The name of the API represents its true purpose in this case by the way, createOrUpdate creates or updates the passed in meeting and create just creates the meeting. I will be the only one working on this project for now, although obviously, I would like others to work on it with me eventually.

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[โ€“] moeris@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, I can think of two reasons immediately. The first is in hermetic testing environments, where you may have two tests where you'd like to see the same entity. You can't always know the order in which tests execute. That means that either seeding operations should be idempotent, or you'd have to handle setup outside of the individual tests. (Which makes the tests, overall, harder to read.)

Another reason could be for resiliency. You may add a retry mechanism into your code in the frontend, to increase resiliency. If a request returns a 500, you don't know if the entity is created. (The server error could occur in post-processing.) You either have to rely on the creation to be idempotent, or you have to make an additional round-trip. Using a create-or-update mechanism reduces latency and simplifies error-handling code.