How do I perform specific parentless requests using Restangular in a neat way? - angularjs

Question

Say I have an API endpoint at /users and another one at /cars. Naturally, a GET request to either of them will get all users or cars available. Now, a GET /users/74/cars should return all cars belonging to user 74.
But my app has many models related to cars, not just users, so more endpoints exist like /shops/34/cars and /mechanics/12/cars. For simplicity, I want all PUT/PATCH requests to be made to the main /cars endpoint.
At the moment of performing the save, Restangular will by default do a PUT request to the endpoint through which the item was loaded. But that endpoint do not exist.
It also provides a nice Restangular.setParentless(['cars']) method that will discard the first part of the url. However, I don't want to do this globally, but specifically for a particular element.
The neatest would actually do it globally, but restrict it for a specific method, like: Restangular.setParentless(['cars'], ['PUT']).
Anything like that around? Or am I overcomplicating it?
So far I tried stuff I don't like:
delete car.parentResource;

Answer 1

I would recommend using self reference links. A self reference link is a link which stores the route which should be used for GET/PUT/DELETE etc. on the item, rather than the URL from which it was pulled.
Example, update the mileage on one of user id 74's cars:
First, configure Restangular to look for a self link property called 'self' on each object.
RestangularProvider.setRestangularFields({
selfLink: 'self'
});
Next, make your call to get the cars. I'll assume that you have already modified your API to return a property called 'self' on each object that has the URL to it's proper API endpoint.
GET /users/74/cars
[
{
"id": 12,
"model": "Camaro",
"make": "Chevrolet",
"year": 1969,
"color": "red",
"odometer": 67294,
"license": "ABC12345",
"self": "/cars/12"
},
{
"id": 14,
"model": "Gallardo",
"make": "Lamborghini",
"year": 2015,
"color": "black",
"odometer": 521,
"license": "XYZ34567",
"self": "/cars/14"
}
]
We want to add some miles to one of them, and then save it. The entire Restangular code would look like:
Restangular.one('users', 74).all('cars').getList().then(function(cars){
cars[1].odometer = 613;
cars[1].put();
});
The PUT will go to /cars/14 instead of /users/74/cars/14. This is very useful for applications like yours that relate models as a graph rather than a strict hierarchical tree.