# Updating / deleting related resources **URL:** \ **Category:** Uncategorized\ **Created:** [May 2, 2016, 7:44am UTC](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/t/updating-deleting-related-resources/451 "2016-05-02T07:44:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dnperfors](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discuss.jsonapi.org/dnperfors/32/135_2.png) [@dnperfors](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/u/dnperfors)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2016, 7:44am UTC](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/t/updating-deleting-related-resources/451/1 "2016-05-02T07:44:32Z")
Just a few minutes before my weekend started, I figured out that there is a big difference between related resources links and relationship links. /books/12/author is the related link, that returns the same resource as /authors/12, but /books/12/relationships/author only returns the resource that describes the relationship, so just the pointer to /authors/12… When I realised this, I started wondering if resources can be created, updated and / or deleted using the related link? The specification doesn’t say anything about it, and somewhere I don’t think it is desirable to do so. Any ideas on this topic? ---
**Author:** ![jlangley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9e8a1a/32.png) [@jlangley](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/u/jlangley)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2016, 10:33pm UTC](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/t/updating-deleting-related-resources/451/2 "2016-07-23T22:33:22Z")
> [@dnperfors](#): > > I don’t think it is desirable to do so. Why not? Without this feature you would need to make two requests to create a new resource and then link it to an existing resource. ---
**Author:** ![dnperfors](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discuss.jsonapi.org/dnperfors/32/135_2.png) [@dnperfors](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/u/dnperfors)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2016, 7:10am UTC](https://discuss.jsonapi.org/t/updating-deleting-related-resources/451/3 "2016-08-02T07:10:36Z")
I don’t really remember what I was thinking when I wrote that, but thinking of it now, the only thing I can think of is that for to-many relationships you can get unexpected results… But I am probably over thinking this…