Resolve Merge Conflicts with Patches

TerminusDB 12.0.7 lets you insert and delete documents inside a patch, so you can fix a merge conflict by hand in one commit. It was released on 10 August 2026.

Insert and delete in patches — resolve a merge conflict and bring in new documents in one commit.
Folded diffs — choose if the diff endpoint expands subdocuments.
Elixir client — a community client for Elixir.

Insert and delete in patches

What it does

POST /api/patch/<path> now accepts three kinds of operations in its patch array:

Field-level patch (as before): SwapValue on one field of an existing document.
Insert: {"@op": "Insert", "@insert": { ...document... }}
Delete: {"@op": "Delete", "@delete": {"@id": "..."}}

Insert and Delete use the same format as the output of the diff endpoint. So you can run a diff, keep only the changes you want, and send the rest as a patch. Inserts can also use @capture and @ref to link new documents to each other in the same commit.

Why it matters

Say main and feature both changed Person/A, and feature also added Person/B. Before 12.0.7 there was no clean way to keep main's Person/A and still bring in Person/B:

The patch endpoint could change existing fields, but it could not insert Person/B.
The apply endpoint could insert, but keeping main's version gave a merge conflict. You had to add a new commit on the feature branch first.

Now one patch can do it all. This is the same diff → pick → apply flow you know from Git, for JSON documents.

Example

Keep main's Person/A, insert Person/B from the feature branch, and remove an old record, in one atomic commit:

curl -u admin:root -X POST \
  "http://localhost:6363/api/patch/admin/people/local/branch/main" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "patch": [
      {"@op": "Insert", "@insert": {"@id": "Person/B", "@type": "Person", "name": "Bob"}},
      {"@op": "Delete", "@delete": {"@id": "Person/Old"}}
    ],
    "author": "admin",
    "message": "Merge feature: add Person/B, keep main version of Person/A"
  }'

To take the feature branch's value for a field instead, add a field-level patch:

Example: JSON

{"@id": "Person/A", "name": {"@op": "SwapValue", "@before": "Monica", "@after": "Laura"}}

If a document does not match what the patch expects, the call fails with a conflict and nothing is written.

Folded diffs

POST /api/diff has a new unfold parameter. The default is true, which is the old behaviour: subdocuments are expanded inline before the comparison. Set "unfold": false to compare documents as they are stored, without expanding subdocuments. The CLI has a matching --unfold flag.

Example: JSON

{ "before_data_version": "main", "after_data_version": "feature", "document_id": "Person/A", "unfold": false }

Read more: Diff endpoint

Elixir client

There is now a community Elixir client, linked from the TerminusDB README. Thanks @thanos.

Fixes

RFC 3986 scheme detection in uri_has_protocol/1 (#2458)
No more false patch conflicts on xsd:decimal properties (#2462)
@shared is part of the Rust change detection (#2478)
SWI-Prolog upgraded to 10.0.2; JWT handling is now backed by Rust (#2507)
macOS build prerequisites documented (#2502)

Thanks to our three new contributors: @Kidnix101, @drernie and @thanos.

Upgrade

Example: Bash

docker pull terminusdb/terminusdb-server:v12.0.7

No data migration is needed. Docker install guide · Full changelog on GitHub

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TerminusDB 12.0.7: Resolve Merge Conflicts with Insert and Delete Patches