js / vue app doing CRUD, how can I track what needs updating?

I'm working on a vue app that uses vuex and gets objects from an api. The tables have paging and fetch batches of objects from the api, sometimes including related entities as nested objects. The UI allows some editing via inputs in a table, and adds via modals.

When the user wants to save all changes, I have a problem: how do I know what to patch via the api?

Idea 1: capture every change on every input and mark the object being edited as dirty
Idea 2: make a deep copy of the data after the fetch, and do a deep comparison to find out what's dirty
Idea 3: this is my question: please tell me that idea 3 exists and it's better than 1 or 2!

If the answer isn't idea 3, I'm really hoping it's not idea 1. There are so many inputs to attach change handlers to, and if the user edits something, then re-edits back to its original value, I'll have marked something dirty that really isn't.

The deep copy / deep compare at least isolates the problem to two places in code, but my sense is that there must be a better way. If this is the answer (also hoping not), do I build the deep copy / deep compare myself, or is there a package for it?

Solution

It looks like you have the final state on the UI and want to persist it on the server. Instead of sending over the delta - I would just send over the full final state and overwrite whatever there was on server side

So if you have user settings - instead of sending what settings were toggled - just send over the "this is what the new set of settings is"