Angular ngRepeat not preserving order of Firebase priority items? - angularjs

Pretty new to Angular & Firebase here, but noticed an odd behavior querying and presenting ordered data that isn't addressed anywhere else yet...
I'm pushing data to firebase and setting priority with a descending negative value so that newest data is on top of the list.
When retrieving the ref with child_added events, I can confirm the data is arriving in the correct order; however, when used with ngRepeat, the data is somehow getting reversed (newest data appears on bottom of ngRepeat list).
If I use something like .append() the data is correctly ordered. But would rather do it the 'Angular' way with ngRepeat.
// example html binding
// ====================================
<ul>
<li ng-repeat="(itemID, item) in list">{{itemID}}</li>
</ul>
// example controller code
// ====================================
var laApp = angular.module('laApp', ['firebase']);
laApp.controller('laAppCtrl', function ($scope, $timeout){
var ref = new Firebase('https://ngrepeatbug.firebaseio.com');
$scope.pushPriority = function(){
var uid = new Date().getTime();
var priority = 0 - uid;
// set with -priority so newest data on top
ref.push().setWithPriority(uid, priority);
}
$scope.list = {};
ref.orderByPriority().on('child_added', function(snap){
$timeout(function(){
var snapID = snap.key();
var snapVal = snap.val();
//repeat method
$scope.list[snapID] = snap.val();
//append method
$('ul.append').append("<li>" + snapVal + "</li>")
})
})
});
Pen comparing ngRepeat and append methods:
http://codepen.io/juddam/pen/dIiLz
I've read other solutions that either convert the $scope.list object into an array that is then used with $filter or reversing order on client, but this defeated the whole purpose of storing data by priority and having a straightforward method for querying and presenting ordered data.
Know orderByPriority is new to firebase v2.0 so wondering if bug or am I missing something obvious?

You're adding the children to an object with this:
$scope.list[snapID] = snap.val();
Even though this looks like you're adding to an array, you're actually adding to a regular object. And as #ZackArgyle says in his comment: the keys in an object have no guaranteed order.
If you want to maintain the order of the items, you should push them into an array.
$scope.list.push(snap.val());
This adds them with numeric indices, which will maintain their order.
If you want to both maintain the order of the items and their key, you will have to manage them in an array.
$scope.list.push({ $id: snap.key(), value: snap.val() });
That last approach is an extremely simplified version of what AngularFire does when you call $asArray().

Related

how to retrieve data nested in two collections from firebase with angular

I'm new in Angular - Firebase development, and I am having problems to understand how to retrieve data nested in two collections.
I have a collection named "Orders", which includes a field call "auth", which is the user ID, and I have another collection that is the "User Profile", wich it's $id is the value of "auth". Inside the User Profile I have a field named roomNumber, and it's content I that I want to retrieve every time I read, in ng-repeat of the Orders.
In my view I was trying to do something like this :
<tr ng-repeat="item in items | filter: searchKeyword ">
<td align="left">{{item.$id}} - {{roomNumber(item.$id)}}</td></tr>
roomNumber is a function in my controller
$scope.roomNumber = function(id) {
var rootRef = new Firebase("https://xxxx-fire-yyyy.firebaseio.com/userProfile"+ '/' + id);
$scope.userdet = $firebaseArray(rootRef);
rootRef.on("value", function(rootSnapshot) {
var key = rootSnapshot.key();
var childKey = rootSnapshot.child("room").val();
console.log("room ", childKey)
});
return childKey
}
When I run this code and see results in my js console, strange things happend:
1. It repeat a lot of times
2. I can never get the childKey value
I have been reading Firebase documentation, but really I do not understand how to do this "silly" thing, does anybody give me a tip of how to do it?
When you bind a function to the $scope and call it within the html it expects to get an answer back right away when called. So when you query firebase and it takes its sweet time getting you back an answer, angularjs has already gotten an answer of undefined from the function.
So what is happening is that you are registering a callback when you provide the function to rootRef.on and then right after you register the callback you are returning the value of childKey. Unfortunately, childKey only gets set by the callback function (which firebase hasn't executed yet). Therefore angularjs gets an answer of undefined from your roomNumber function.
In order to make this work, you are going to have to get the room numbers beforehand and then probably add them to each of your items in $scope.items then use
<td align="left">{{item.$id}} - {{item.room}}</td></tr>
instead of
<td align="left">{{item.$id}} - {{roomNumber(item.$id)}}</td></tr>
To load all the room numbers you could call some function like this one after $scope.items has loaded
for (var i = 0; i < $scope.items.length; i++) {
var rootRef = new Firebase("https://xxxx-fire-yyyy.firebaseio.com/userProfile"+ '/' + $scope.items[i].$id);
$scope.userdet = $firebaseArray(rootRef);
rootRef.on("value", function(rootSnapshot) {
var key = rootSnapshot.key();
var childKey = rootSnapshot.val().room;
$scope.items[i].room = childKey;
});
}
It would change each of the items to have a reference to the room. Unfortunately, that list wouldn't update as the data updates, so the better solution would be to do that same query in whatever function was getting your items from the server and add the room to each item as it was being added to the items list.
To fix the issue with childKey not reading you need to use this:
var childKey = rootSnapshot.val().room;
instead of this:
var childKey = rootSnapshot.child("room").val();
console.log("room ", childKey)
Reference: https://www.firebase.com/docs/web/guide/retrieving-data.html

How to Fetch a set of Specific Keys in Firebase?

Say I'd like to fetch only items that contains keys: "-Ju2-oZ8sJIES8_shkTv", "-Ju2-zGVMuX9tMGfySko", and "-Ju202XUwybotkDPloeo".
var items = new Firebase("https://hello-cambodia.firebaseio.com/items");
items.orderByKey().equalTo("-Ju2-gVQbXNgxMlojo-T").once('value', function(snap1){
items.orderByKey().equalTo("-Ju2-zGVMuX9tMGfySko").once('value', function(snap2){
items.orderByKey().equalTo("-Ju202XUwybotkDPloeo").once('value', function(snap3){
console.log(snap1.val());
console.log(snap2.val());
console.log(snap3.val());
})
})
});
I don't feel that this is the right way to fetch the items, especially, when I have 1000 keys over to fetch from.
If possible, I really hope for something where I can give a set of array
like
var itemKeys = ["-Ju2-gVQbXNgxMlojo-T","-Ju2-zGVMuX9tMGfySko", "-Ju202XUwybotkDPloeo"];
var items = new Firebase("https://hello-cambodia.firebaseio.com/items");
items.orderByKey().equalTo(itemKeys).once('value', function(snap){
console.log(snap.val());
});
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks
Doing this:
items.orderByKey().equalTo("-Ju2-gVQbXNgxMlojo-T")
Gives exactly the same result as:
items.child("-Ju2-gVQbXNgxMlojo-T")
But the latter is not only more readable, it will also prevent the need for scanning indexes.
But what you have to answer is why want to select these three items? Is it because they all have the same status? Because they fell into a specific date range? Because the user selected them in a list? As soon as you can identify the reason for selecting these three items, you can look to convert the selection into a query. E.g.
var recentItems = ref.orderByChild("createdTimestamp")
.startAt(Date.now() - 24*60*60*1000)
.endAt(Date.now());
recentItems.on('child_added'...
This query would give you the items of the past day, if you had a field with the timestamp.
You can use Firebase child. For example,
var currFirebaseRoom = new Firebase(yourFirebaseURL)
var userRef = currFirebaseRoom.child('users');
Now you can access this child with
userRef.on('value', function(userSnapshot) {
//your code
}
You generally should not be access things using the Firebase keys. Create a child called data and put all your values there and then you can access them through that child reference.

Transform business object into view model in angular-meteor

Background
I have an angular-meteor app and a collection of business objects in mongodb, e.g.:
{ startDate: new Date(2015, 1, 1), duration: 65, value: 36 }
I want to render this data in different views. One of the views is a graph, another is a list of entries.
The list of entries is easy. Just bind the collection to the model:
vm.entries = $scope.meteorCollection(MyData, false);
In the view I would do:
<div ng-repeat="entry in vm.entries">{{entry.startDate}} - ...</div>
But now for the graph. I want to transform each element into a { x, y } object and give the view that, e.g.:
vm.graphPoints = transformData(getDataHere());
The problem is that the data is not fetched here, in angular-meteor is looks like it is fetched when calling the entry in vm.entries in the view. The kicker is that the transformData method, needs to loop through the data and for each item index into other items to calculate the resulting x, y. Hence I cannot use a simple forEach loop (without having access to the other items in some way).
Question
So how can i fetch the data in the controller - transform it - and still have one-way binding (observing) on new data added to the database?
Thanks
Update
The following code works, but I think there could be performance problems with fetching the whole collection each time there is a change.
$scope.$meteorSubscribe("myData").then(function() {
$scope.$meteorAutorun(function() {
var rawData = MyData.find().fetch();
vm.model.myData = transformData(rawData);
});
});
EDIT:
This is the current solution:
$scope.collectionData = $scope.meteorCollection(MyData, false);
$meteor.autorun($scope, function() {
vm.graphPoints = transformData($scope.collectionData.fetch());
});
There is some missing information. do you wan't to have some kind of model object in the client? if that is correct I think you have to do something like this:
$meteor.autorun($scope, function() {
vm.graphPoints = transformData($scope.meteorCollection(MyData, false));
});
How about using the Collection Helper Meteor package to add the function:
https://github.com/dburles/meteor-collection-helpers/
?

How to prepare arrays for insertion into Firebase database?

I have a question about adding arrays to Firebase using AngularFire. Let's start with a quick example. What I tend to do when my users on the front end create a list is something like this:
angular.module("app", ["firebase"])
.controller("createListCtrl", function($scope, $firebaseArray) {
console.log("controller loaded");
$scope.newList = [];
$scope.addItemToList = function(itemlist) {
console.log(itemlist);
$scope.newList.push({
"item": itemlist,
"done": false
});
}
$scope.sendToDb = function() {
var ref = new Firebase("https://xxxxxx.firebaseio.com");
var list = $firebaseArray(ref);
list.$add({
"list": $scope.newList
}).then(function(ref) {
var id = ref.key();
console.log("added record with id " + id);
console.log(list.$indexFor(id)); // returns location in the array
})
}
Ok all nice and dandy and it all works great but I then I read this article:
https://www.firebase.com/blog/2014-04-28-best-practices-arrays-in-firebase.html
And I heard more people say to avoid arrays and I see the problem with array in Firebase, but what is the alternative, the article says this structure:
{foo: {counter: 1}, bar: {counter: 1}, baz: {counter: 1}};
Is that really a better structure? I think it gets messy and I don't even know how I would achieve this structure starting with something like this:$scope.newList = {};. Is it really a problem doing it with an array. Are arrays really evil in Firebase? Thanks in advance for an explanation or a better alternative.
edit
This is how the list is stored in Firebase, which does not seem very good:
---uniqueID
---list
---0
---done:false
---item:"item1"
---1
---done:false
---item:"item2"
---2
---done:false
---item:"item3"
The $firebaseArray class, which you're already using, provides a mapping between Firebase's ordered collections (which use push ids for their keys) and AngularJS's array (which use regular arrays).
So in your controller's constructor instead of creating a local array for itemList, create a two-way synchronized $firebaseArray:
$scope.newList = $firebaseArray(new Firebase("https://xxxxxx.firebaseio.com"));
The blog post you're referring to served as the basis for quite a few changes to AngularFire since then. I highly recommend that you work through the AngularFire development guide. It will take at most a few hours and will answer many more questions than just this one (which is covered in the section on synchronized arrays).
Update
Thanks for the update. I now get what you're trying to do. So you initially want to keep the list of items client-side only, and then all at once save it to Firebase.
In that case, I'd write sendToDb like this:
$scope.sendToDb = function () {
var ref = new Firebase("https://xxxxxx.firebaseio.com");
var listRef = ref.push();
$scope.newList.forEach(function(item) {
var itemRef = listRef.push({ item: item.item, done: item.done });
console.log('Added item with key: '+itemRef.key());
});
}
This uses the regular Firebase JavaScript SDK. But since AngularFire is built on top of that, they will co-exist without problems.
So instead of pushing the array in one go, I simply loop over the items in it and push each of them.
Working fiddle here: https://jsfiddle.net/frankvanpuffelen/vnh5dbwq/11/

Cannot set priority on $asObject()'s child keys using Angularfire 0.8

According to the Angularfire docs, when working with an object returned through $asObject(), you can set priority for said object by defining a $priority property on the object and then using $save().
My code works great, but $priority isn't doing anything. Here's some code with complete explanations in the comments:
app.factory('MyService', function($rootScope, $firebase) {
// The complete Firebase url
var ref = *obfuscated*;
// Returning the dataset as an object containing objects
var data = $firebase(ref).$asObject;
// This object is what's returned by MyService
var Data = {
// Method to create a new object within the data set,
// keyed by myId. Attempting to set priority for the
// record via $priority. returnData.uid is a valid string.
create: function(returnData, myId) {
data[myId] = {
myId: myId,
$priority: returnData.uid
};
// No need to explain the stuff between here and the
// $rootScope listener below, just added for context
data.$save().then(function() {
setMyId(myId);
});
},
findByMyId: function(myId) {
if (myId) {
return data[myId];
}
}
};
function setMyId(myId) {
$rootScope.myId = User.findByMyId(myId);
}
// This event listener works fine, fires
// at user login and returns data
$rootScope.$on('$firebaseSimpleLogin:login', function(e, returnData) {
// returnData.uid has the correct value - this
// function should return the object(aka record) with
// a priority matching returnData.uid
var query = $firebase(ref.startAt(returnData.uid).endAt(returnData.uid)).$asObject();
// console shows an object with the normal $firebase
// properties, but no records. If I define query without
// limiting the set ($firebase(ref).$asObject()), it returns
// the full set just fine. The priority on all records is still
// null.
console.log(query);
query.$loaded(function() {
setData(query.myId);
});
});
return Data;
});
Yes, I'm following Thinkster.io's tutorial and I'm in Chapter 7. No, this is not a duplicate of the other questions about that chapter, I already found my way around the pre-Angularfire 0.8 code present in their examples, just can't set $priority, and I've spent about 5 hours so far trying to find a solution through my own efforts and on the web.
Any takers?
When viewed in the light of how JavaScript works with objects (i.e. unordered), how JSON handles objects (i.e. unordered), and in light of the expectation that AngularFire's $asObject() method is intended for storing key/value pairs, and singular records that are not used as a collection, this starts to make some sense.
Internally, the synchronize'd object's $save method calls Firebase's setWithPriority. In set or setWithPriority calls, the child nodes are replaced. Any meta data like priorities on those children are replaced.
In AngularFire, $asArray is intended to handle ordered collections, and provides the ability to set $priority on child nodes (only one level deep, of course, as it treats its children as singular records that are not themselves collections).
Since, in your case, you want to work with fixed keys rather than push ids, you'll probably want to override the $add method using $extendFactory and do something like the following:
angular.module(MY_APP).factory('FixedKeysFactory', function($FirebaseArray, $firebaseUtils) {
return $FirebaseArray.$extendFactory({
$add: function(data) {
this._assertNotDestroyed('$add');
if( angular.isObject(data) && typeof data.$id === 'string' ) {
return this.$inst().$set(data.$id, $firebaseUtils.toJSON(data));
}
else {
return this.$inst().$push($firebaseUtils.toJSON(data));
}
}
});
});
You could then pass this into your $firebase instance in place of the default factory:
var list = $firebase(ref, {arrayFactory: FixedKeysFactory}).$asArray();
A simpler but less awesomatic™ solution would be to manually add your objects to the array, manually giving them a $id, then call $save:
var list = $firebase(ref).$asArray();
var i = list.length;
list.push({ foo: 'bar', $id: 'kato' });
list.$save(i);
Some notes on the future: It will soon be possible to use any field as sort criteria and there will be no need to set priorities (yay!). It will probably be possible to set your own $id before calling $add on a synchronized array in AngularFire as soon as I clear that with the other devs (like the 0.8.3 release).

Resources