An api can still do that. I do this all the time with json/http apis: a bulk_upsert endpoint and you just feed/stream a batch of objects. Never did a bulk_patch but the implementation is nearly the same.
If I cat all those patch objects to a file on a shared drive, knowing that at midnight UTC every day, it'll get picked up and applied, that's still an API, albeit a kinda janky transport layer.
If I cat all those patch objects to a file on a shared drive, knowing that at midnight UTC every day, it'll get picked up and applied, that's still an API, albeit a kinda janky transport layer.