Gastric cancer is one of the common malignant tumors worldwide. Due to the popularization of gastroscopy technology and the improvement of patients' awareness of health checkups, the detection rate of early gastric cancer has been increasing year by year, and the five-year survival rate of early gastric cancer is up to more than 90% after surgery, and along with the high survival rate, the postoperative quality of life is particularly important for patients. The surgical treatment of gastric cancer has also experienced the course of transformation from traditional radical gastrectomy to function-preserving surgery. Function-preserving gastrectomy is not only an anatomical-morphological gastrectomy, but also based on oncological theories such as the physiology of the stomach (motility, secretion) and the histological changes of its background gastric mucosa. Reasonable design of the surgical pattern to reduce surgical invasion and ensure maximum preservation of the function of the residual stomach itself, and the function of the surrounding related organs (liver, gallbladder, pancreas, and intestines) after surgery will greatly improve the quality of postoperative survival. This article summarizes the main research results and progress of function-preserving surgery for surgical gastric cancer in recent years, with a view to providing reference for clinical work.