How to patch a status of a custom resource?

[tom-tuvis]

I've been trying to send a patch request to a custom object using the javascript client and it seems that if the status doesn't exist I'm getting rejected. That's the code I'm using:

const update = { state: "synced" }

const body = Object.entries(update).map(([key, val]) => {
      return {
        "op": "replace",
        "path": `/status/${key}`,
        "value": val
      }
    })

  return await k8sApi.patchNamespacedCustomObjectStatus({
    group: GROUP,
    version: VERSION,
    namespace,
    plural: crd,
    name,
    body,
    fieldValidation: "Strict"
  })

What I do to get around it is to make another call before sending the patch to check if the resource has a status subresource, and if it doesn't, I add an add operation at the start. But then I end up with 2 calls where I could have done it with one.

I've been trying to find a way to send it a merge patch, and to my understanding I need to change the Content-Type to application/merge-patch+json - but I couldn't find where to do it. Looking at the [code][1], I see that there's some internal logic to determine the Content-Type header, rather than taking it from the any argument in the call.

Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong? How can I patch the status of a resource that might not have a status yet (and do it with a single call)?

[brendandburns]

Have a look at the example here:

https://github.com/kubernetes-client/javascript/blob/main/examples/patch-example.js#L23

To see how to set the content type.