AngularFire: How to filter a synchronized array? - angularjs

Question

Consider a set of items and users. Each user can have one or more items. The set of items can be quite big, but every user will normally have small amount of items.
app:
items:
item1:
name: 'table'
color: 'white'
createdAt: '2014-08-09T12:54:58.803Z'
item2:
name: 'macbook air'
color: 'silver'
createdAt: '2014-06-09T12:54:58.803Z'
item3:
name: 'firebase t-shirt'
color: 'yellow'
createdAt: '2014-07-09T12:54:58.803Z'
users:
user1:
items:
item1: true
item3: true
user2:
items:
item2: true
Given a user id, e.g. user1, I would like to display a list of user's items, sorted by createdAt:
yellow firebase t-shirt
white table
Every update on the Firebase server should be reflected in the app view.
I guess the view should look like this:
<div ng-repeat="item in items | orderBy:'createdAt'">
{{ item.color }} {{ item.name }}
</div>
But, I can't figure out an easy way to set up $scope.items.
This is what I currently do:
var userItemsRef = new Firebase(FIREBASE_ROOT + '/users/user1/items');
$scope.userItems = $firebase(userItemsRef).$asArray();
$scope.userItems.$loaded(function() {
$scope.userItems.$watch(setItems);
setItems();
});
function setItems() {
var promises = $scope.userItems.map(function(userItem) {
var itemRef = new Firebase(FIREBASE_ROOT + '/items/' + userItem.$id);
return $firebase(itemRef).$asObject().$loaded();
});
$q.all(promises).then(function(items) {
$scope.items = items;
});
}
Is this the best way to utilize AngularFire?

Answer 1

It would probably be simplest to store the items by user. So a structure like this:
/app/items/$user_id/$item_id/...
This would allow for the items belonging to a particular user to be retrieved like so:
var userId = 'user1';
var ref = new Firebase(FIREBASE_ROOT + '/items/' + userId);
$scope.items = $firebase(ref).$asArray();
If this isn't possible, because items are shared between users, it's probably simplest to use a join lib.
var userId = 'user1';
var userIndexRef = new Firebase(FIREBASE_ROOT + '/users/' + userId + '/items');
var itemsRef = new Firebase(FIREBASE_ROOT + '/items/');
var ref = Firebase.util.intersection(userIndexRef, itemsRef);
$scope.items = $firebase(ref).$asArray();
But generally, it's safest and simplest to take the first route.