Saving subresource with Angular's $resource - angularjs

Question

I have a factory defined which returns a $resource:
myApp.factory('Region', function($resource) {
return $resource(baseUrl + '/templates/:templateId/regions/:regionId', null, {
query: {
method: 'GET',
isArray: false
},
update: {
method: 'PUT'
}
});
});
As you can see, a region is a subresource of a template, and I've defined the endpoint as /templates/:templateId/regions/:regionId.
My issue comes when I want to save a new region. How do I specify the templateId to save the region to? Here's my snippet:
$scope.save = function() {
if ($scope.mode === 'edit') {
// TODO
} else {
Region.save($scope.region, function(success) {
$state.go('app.templateList')
});
}
};
In every other resource I have I've just used Model.save($scope.model);, I don't know how to specify other URL parameters and the Angular docs don't seem to cover it.

Answer 1

According the docs, non-GET (e.g. PUT) methods accepts following arguments
Resource.save([parameters], postData, [success], [error]).
Where parameters is a path params and it is optional, postData – body of the request. If you want to provide templateId, just add it as first argument:
Region.save({templateId: 'id'}, $scope.region, function(success) {
$state.go('app.templateList')
});

Answer 2

I've faced similar dillema. I thought about some generic convention where to create subresource X eg as a new element of a collection owned by some resource Y I would do
POST /api/Y/<yId>/X
then to access collection of X owned by Y:
GET /api/Y/<yId>/X
However for modifying or deleting subresource we could access subresource directly:
PUT /api/X/<xId>
DELETE /api/X/<xId>
to achieve above we could use $resource definition as
Subresource = $resource('/api/:parent/:parentId/subresource/:id',
{ id: '#id' },
{
'update': { method:'PUT' } // this is because Angular lacks PUT support
});
then we can use it like
var subresourceList;
Subresource.query({parent: 'Y', parentId: parentId },
function(result) {
// handle result here
subresourceList = result;
});
and after modifying single subresource object we can save it using
var subresource = subresourceList[0];
subresource.someProp = 'newValue';
subresource.$update()
with earlier subresource definition the $update will do PUT directly to /api/X/<xId> which is reasonable whenever subresource X object in terms of being modified has nothing to do with its owning Y.