To Create a New Model
In your terminal:
cd project-name
sc-gen model contacts/contact
This creates:
- The model file in clients/contacts/models/contact.js
- The unit test in clients/contacts/tests/models/contact.js
- A fixtures file in clients/contacts/fixtures/contact.js
To Create Some Models
The attributes you get from the server should be simple JSON hashes. They must have at least two properties:
- type: A string identifying the model type. By default, use the class name. In this case “Contact”.
- guid: A unique identifier. This will be used to auto-merge/update records in the future.
Here is an example of some JSON data:
var records = [
{ type: "Contact", firstName: "Charles", lastName: "Jolley", guid: "contact-1", favoriteNumber: "3" }
];
All models are kept in an in-memory database called the Store. To add records to the Store, you just get these data hashes from your server in whatever way you like and add them to the store like so:
SC.Store.updateRecords(records);
records should be an array of one or more data hashes. Note that you can call this method as often as you need. If you pass in data hashes with a type/guid matching an existing record, then the hash will simply update the record. Otherwise, one new record instance will be found for each item.
If you want to try the following examples without having to create a new app, you can simply add some sample records to the fixtures file created in Step 1 above. These fixtures will be auto-loaded into the Store on app load.
To Get Records
In your app, you can retrieve some records from the store using finder functions. This call will find all the contacts in the store (this does not contact your server, it just uses whatever is in the local datastore. You should load your records into the store first.):
var recs = Contacts.Contact.findAll();
To Edit Records
Just set and get properties on them. If the properties are string type, you don’t even need to declare them:
var rec = Contacts.Contact.findAll()[0];
rec.set(’firstName’, ‘Joe’); // changes the firstName to Joe.
If you have a property that is not a string but some other type, you can add a line to the Contact class declaring the type:
Contacts.Contact = SC.Record.extend({
favoriteNumberType: Number
});
Now when you get/set the favoriteNumber property, the Contact record will automatically convert it to/from a number. This works for dates and can even work for other model objects, but that is for another tutorial.
To Save Records
You can get back out the attributes hash of a record by getting the attributes property:
var rec = Contacts.Contact.findAll().first();
var attrs = rec.get('attributes');
This will be a JSON-compliant hash that you can serialize and send back to your server in your favorite way.
Conclusion
That’s it for part 1. There is a lot more you can do with the model layer. As usual, the in-source docs are best and can be views on the doc viewer page.
Tags: Uncategorized by charles
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