Update a record

Change specific fields on an existing record, leaving everything else untouched.

When to use this pattern

• You're progressing a record through a workflow (state changes, assignments, work notes)
• You're writing back results from an external process to the record that requested it
• You have the record's sys_id — if you don't, find it first

Required values

Value	Description
Table name	The record's table (for example, incident)
Record sys_id	The record to update
Fields	The field values to change

Example

package main

import (
	"context"
	"fmt"
	"log"

	servicenow "github.com/michaeldcanady/servicenow-sdk-go/v2"
	"github.com/michaeldcanady/servicenow-sdk-go/v2/credentials"
	tableapi "github.com/michaeldcanady/servicenow-sdk-go/v2/tableapi"
)

func main() {
  // Step 1: Authenticate and initialize the client
  cred := credentials.NewBasicProvider("{username}", "{password}")

  client, err := servicenow.NewServiceNowServiceClient(
  	servicenow.WithAuthenticationProvider(cred),
  	servicenow.WithInstance("{instance}"),
  )
  if err != nil {
  	log.Fatalf("failed to initialize client: %v", err)
  }

  // Step 2: Build the update — set only the fields to change;
  // everything else on the record is left untouched
  update := tableapi.NewTableRecord()
  if err := update.SetValue("short_description", "Updated description"); err != nil {
  	log.Fatal(err)
  }

  // Step 3: Apply it to the record by sys_id
  sysID := "{SysID}"
  response, err := client.Now().Table("{TableName}").ByID(sysID).Put(context.Background(), update, nil)
  if err != nil {
  	log.Fatalf("unable to update record: %v", err)
  }

  if _, err := response.GetResult(); err != nil {
  	log.Fatalf("unable to read result: %v", err)
  }

  fmt.Printf("Updated record %s\n", sysID)
}

Tips

• Only the fields you SetValue are serialized into the request — there's no read-modify-write cycle to race with other writers on untouched fields.
• Put on a wrong sys_id returns core.NotFoundError; match it with errors.As (error handling).

Next steps

• Delete a record: Remove records you no longer need.
• Error handling: Handle not-found and validation failures cleanly.