Update vehicle fields

This document covers important vehicle fields you can update when creating and managing vehicles.

vehicle_state: Determines the availability of the vehicle for new trips.
vehicle_type: Required field when creating a vehicle. The field can also serve as a filter criteria for vehicle matches. See Create a vehicle for details on setting this field.
attributes[]: An optional array of type VehicleAttribute. Use them to define custom criteria to enhance filtering behavior when searching or listing vehicles.

For a complete list of vehicle fields, see:

Vehicle message (gRPC)
Vehicle resource (REST)

Vehicle state field

Your system can set vehicle state to OFFLINE or ONLINE. For example, you might set vehicle state to ONLINE every day at 9 AM and OFFLINE every day at 5 PM.

OFFLINE mode	ONLINE mode
Use `OFFLINE` to indicate that a vehicle is not accepting new trips. Note that the vehicle can still complete assigned trips while in this state.	A `Vehicle` created in the `ONLINE` state may be immediately returned in response to `SearchVehicles` queries. See Search vehicles for more details. Vehicles created in the `ONLINE` state should use the `last_location` field in the `CreateVehicle` call.

Vehicle attributes field

Use the vehicle attributes field to create customized criteria to enable your consumers or fleet operators to find vehicles in your fleet across a wider variety of search criteria. This enhances the capabilities of your apps to provide better vehicle matches over what you would from using search criteria based solely on other vehicle fields. Each vehicle can have at most 100 attributes, and each one must have a unique key. Values can be strings, booleans, or numbers.

For example, you could declare a custom attribute called class to differentiate your rideshare vehicles across class levels. You'd use the following string values to represent vehicle class levels: ECONOMY, STANDARD, and LUXURY.

However, custom attribute values don't have to be mutually exclusive. You might use criteria such as pet-friendly, non-smoking, and able to take longer trips. Each of these could be a separate custom attribute that uses boolean values. A given vehicle could be assigned all three of these custom attributes along with the class custom attribute set to the appropriate string value.

Using attributes this way can provide you a wide variety of features useful to finding vehicles for trips with specific needs. For instructions on how to use custom attributes as query filters, see Search vehicles.

Update vehicle attributes

You can update vehicle attributes using either UpdateVehicle or UpdateVehicleAttributes. Each attributes key can only have one value per vehicle. You declare custom vehicle attributes using the attributes in the field mask, and then providing values based on the method below.

`UpdateVehicle`		`UpdateVehicleAttributes`
This API does not allow updating only a single attribute. When using this method, any use of the `attributes` field in the field mask results in the entire set of vehicle attributes being re-declared for the vehicle. This results in an overwrite of any pre-existing attribute not explicitly included in the field mask. If you use this method to declare a new custom attribute, you must also re-declare every custom attribute you want the vehicle to retain. If you exclude the `attributes` in the field mask, then this method leaves existing custom attributes as previously defined for the vehicle. If you use `attributes` in the field mask, but without setting values, that is equivalent to removing all custom attributes from the vehicle.		This method accepts a specific list of attributes to update. The request updates or adds only those attributes specified in the field mask. Pre-existing attributes that are not specified remain unaltered.

Update vehicle fields example

This section shows how to update vehicle fields using UpdateVehicleRequest, which includes an update_mask to indicate which fields to update. See the Protocol Buffers documentation on field masks for details.

Updates to fields other than last_location require Fleet Engine On-demand Admin privileges.

Example: enable new trip type and custom attribute

This example enables back_to_back trips for the vehicle and also specifies a new attribute: class. As noted in Update vehicle attributes earlier, updating the attributes field using this approach requires you to indicate all custom attributes you want to retain. Therefore the example shows a cash_only value written to preserve it from being overwritten during an update operation that specifies the attributes field.

To update only the value of one key-value attribute pair, use the UpdateVehicleAttributes method instead and don't include the attribute field in the field mask for the UpdateVehicle request.

See the providers.vehicles.update reference for gRPC and REST.

gRPC

static final String PROJECT_ID = "project-id";
static final String VEHICLE_ID = "vid-8241890";

VehicleServiceBlockingStub vehicleService = VehicleService.newBlockingStub(channel);

String vehicleName = "providers/" + PROJECT_ID + "/vehicles/" + VEHICLE_ID;
Vehicle updatedVehicle = Vehicle.newBuilder()
    .setVehicleState(VehicleState.ONLINE)
    .addAllAttributes(ImmutableList.of(
        VehicleAttribute.newBuilder().setKey("class").setValue("ECONOMY").build(),
        VehicleAttribute.newBuilder().setKey("cash_only").setValue("false").build()))
    .setBackToBackEnabled(true)
    .build();

UpdateVehicleRequest updateVehicleRequest = UpdateVehicleRequest.newBuilder()
    .setName(vehicleName)
    .setVehicle(updatedVehicle)
    .setUpdateMask(FieldMask.newBuilder()
        .addPaths("vehicle_state")
        .addPaths("attributes")
        .addPaths("back_to_back_enabled"))
    .build();

try {
  Vehicle updatedVehicle =
      vehicleService.updateVehicle(updateVehicleRequest);
} catch (StatusRuntimeException e) {
  Status s = e.getStatus();
  switch (s.getCode()) {
    case NOT_FOUND:
      // Most implementations will call CreateVehicle in this case
      break;
    case PERMISSION_DENIED:
      break;
  }
  return;
}
// If no Exception, Vehicle updated successfully.

REST

curl -X PUT \
  "https://fleetengine.googleapis.com/v1/providers/project-id/vehicles/vid-8241890?updateMask=vehicle_state,attributes,back_to_back_enabled" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $JWT" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data-binary @- << EOM
{
    "vehicleState": "ONLINE",
    "attributes": [
      {"key": "class", "value": "LUXURY"},
      {"key": "cash_only", "value": "false"}
    ],
    "backToBackEnabled": true
}
EOM

What's next

Update a vehicle location