API design - return which operations the user can perform

Question

My Rest API returns a tree structure like this:

 [
 {
 "name":"test old",
 "id": 1,
 "type":"a-object",
 "spend":13,
 "status": "active",
 "children":[
 {
 "name":"test women old",
 "id": 2,
 "type":"b-object",
 "spend":13,
 "status": "active",
 "children":[..]
 }
 ]
 }
 ]

I would like to tell the user for each node which fields could be updated for example, for the first a-object test old he can only set the status, while for b-object he can set the status, name and spend.

What is the REST API way to do it?

I tried to look for an example for a API that does such a thing and didn't find - do you know of one that does it?

Answer 1

To comply with rest you need to manipulate (get,put...) whole resources. Make each modifyable field within your main resource a sub resource... then use hateoas to notify users of the operations that can be performed on each sub resource.