Dereferencing objects with angularJS' $resource - angularjs

I'm new to AngularJS and I am currently building a webapp using a Django/Tastypie API. This webapp works with posts and an API call (GET) looks like :
{
title: "Bootstrap: wider input field - Stack Overflow",
link: "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/978...",
author: "/v1/users/1/",
resource_uri: "/v1/posts/18/",
}
To request these objects, I created an angular's service which embed resources declared like the following one :
Post: $resource(ConfigurationService.API_URL_RESOURCE + '/v1/posts/:id/')
Everything works like a charm but I would like to solve two problems :
How to properly replace the author field by its value ? In other word, how the request as automatically as possible every reference field ?
How to cache this value to avoid several calls on the same endpoint ?
Again, I'm new to angularJS and I might missed something in my comprehension of the $resource object.
Thanks,
Maxime.

With regard to question one, I know of no trivial, out-of-the-box solution. I suppose you could use custom response transformers to launch subsidiary $resource requests, attaching promises from those requests as properties of the response object (in place of the URLs). Recent versions of the $resource factory allow you to specify such a transformer for $resource instances. You would delegate to the global default response transformer ($httpProvider.defaults.transformResponse) to get your actual JSON, then substitute properties and launch subsidiary requests from there. And remember, when delegating this way, to pass along the first TWO, not ONE, parameters your own response transformer receives when it is called, even though the documentation mentions only one (I learned this the hard way).
There's no way to know when every last promise has been fulfilled, but I presume you won't have any code that will depend on this knowledge (as it is common for your UI to just be bound to bits and pieces of the model object, itself a promise, returned by the original HTTP request).
As for question two, I'm not sure whether you're referring to your main object (in which case $scope should suffice as a means of retaining a reference) or these subsidiary objects that you propose to download as a means of assembling an aggregate on the client side. Presuming the latter, I guess you could do something like maintaining a hash relating URLs to objects in your $scope, say, and have the success functions on your subsidiary $resource requests update this dictionary. Then you could make the response transformer I described above check the hash first to see if it's already got the resource instance desired, getting the $resource from the back end only when such a local copy is absent.
This is all a bunch of work (and round trips) to assemble resources on the client side when it might be much easier just to assemble your aggregate in your application layer and serve it up pre-cooked. REST sets no expectations for data normalization.

Related

Should I use POST or GET if I want to send an Array of filters to fetch all articles related with those filters

I havent find ressources online to solve my problem.
I'm creating an app with React Native that fetches and shows news articles from my database.
At the top of the page, there's some buttons with filters inside, for example:
one button "energy",
one button "politics"
one button "people"
one button "china"
etc...
Everytime I press one of those buttons, the filter corresponding is stored in an array "selectedFilters", and I want to fetch my database to only show articles that are corresponding to those filters.
Multiple filters can be selected at the same time.
I know one way of doing it, with a POST request:
await fetch('187.345.32.33:3000/fetch-articles', {
method: 'POST',
headers: {'Content-Type':'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'},
body: 'filters=${JSON.stringify(selectedFilters)}'
});
But the fact is, I read everywhere, and I also was teached, that POST request are used when creating or removing, and theoretically, what I should use is a GET request.
But I don't know how to send an Array with GET request.
I read online that I can pass multiple parameters to my url(for example: arr[0]=selectedFilters[0]&arr[1]=... but the fact is I never know in advance how many items will be in my array.
And also I'm not sure if I could write exactly the same way as my POST request above, but with GET:
await fetch('187.345.32.33:3000/fetch-articles', {
method: 'GET',
headers: {'Content-Type':'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'},
body: 'filters=${JSON.stringify(selectedFilters)}'
});
or if I can only pass items in the url, but does this work ?
await fetch('187.345.32.33:3000/fetch-articles?arr[0]=${selectedFilters[0]', {
Or even better if something like this could work:
await fetch('187.345.32.33:3000/fetch-articles?filters=${JSON.stringify(selectedFilters)}', {
Thanks for your help
You should definitely use a GET request if your purpose is to fetch the data.
One way of passing the array through the URL is by using a map function to create a comma separated string with all the filters. This way you would not need to know in advance how many elements are in the array. The server can then fetch the string from the URL and split it on the commas.
One more method you can try is to save a filters array on the server side for the session. You can then use a POST/PUT request to modify that array with new filter as user adds or remove them. Finally you can use an empty GET request to fetch the news as the server will already have the filters for that session.
But the fact is, I read everywhere, and I also was teached, that POST request are used when creating or removing, and theoretically, what I should use is a GET request.
Yes, you do read that everywhere. It's wrong (or at best incomplete).
POST serves many useful purposes in HTTP, including the general purpose of “this action isn’t worth standardizing.” (Fielding, 2009)
It may help to remember that on the HTML web, POST was the only supported method for requesting changes to resources, and the web was catastrophically successful.
For requests that are effectively read only, we should prefer to use GET, because general purpose HTTP components can leverage the fact that GET is safe (for example, we can automatically retry a safe request if the response is lost on an unreliable network).
I'm not sure if I could write exactly the same way as my POST request above, but with GET
Not quite exactly the same way
A client SHOULD NOT generate content in a GET request unless it is made directly to an origin server that has previously indicated, in or out of band, that such a request has a purpose and will be adequately supported. An origin server SHOULD NOT rely on private agreements to receive content, since participants in HTTP communication are often unaware of intermediaries along the request chain. -- RFC 9110
The right idea is to think about this in the framing of HTML forms; in HTML, the same collection of input controls can be used with both GET and POST. The difference is what the browser does with the information.
Very roughly, a GET form is used when you want to put the key value pairs described by the submitted form into the query part of the request target. So something roughly like
await fetch('187.345.32.33:3000/fetch-articles?filters=${JSON.stringify(selectedFilters)}', {
method: 'GET'
});
Although we would normally want to be using a URI Template to generate the request URI, rather than worrying about escaping everything correctly "by hand".
However, there's no rule that says general purpose HTTP components need to support infinitely long URI (for instance, Internet Explorer used to have a limit just over 2000 characters).
To work around these limits, you might choose to support POST - it's a tradeoff, you lose the benefits of safe semantics and general purpose cache invalidation, you gain that it works in extreme cases.

What's the preferred way to go about using backbone with non-crud resources?

New to backbone/marionette, but I believe that I understand how to use backbone when dealing with CRUD/REST; however, consider something like results from a search query. How should one model this? Of course the results likely relate to some model(s), but they are not meant to be tied to said model(s).
Part of me thinks that I should use a collection using a model that doesn't actually sync with a data store through the server, but instead just exists as a means of a modeling a search result object.
Another solution could be to have a collection with no models and just override parse.
I assume that the former is preferred, but again I have no experience with the framework. If there's an alternative/better solution than those listed above, please advise.
I prefer having one object which is responsible for both request and response parsing. It can parse the response to appropriate models and nothing more. I mean - if some of those parsed models are required somewhere in your page, there is something that keeps reference to this wrapper object and takes models from response it requires via wrapper methods.
Another option is to have Radio (https://github.com/marionettejs/backbone.radio) in this wrapper - you will not have to keep wrapper object in different places but call for data via Radio.

How to design the connection between raw backend data and template with AngularJS?

Angular novice here.
I have a REST API of my own creation that supplies data (data that has been sourced from a 3rd party and undergone very little transformation). The "heaviest" endpoint returns over 100 key-value pairs in JSON.
I also have a template that I made by hand that has places for all of this data to go. The thing is, a lot of the data my API returns must undergo light transformations before being stuck in the template.
For example:
a string must have underscores replaced with spaces
an ID must be resolved to both a string and an image (both retrievable from REST API) that get placed in different parts of the template.
This has to be done multiple times per page; the endpoint returns an array, with each entry containing the 100+ key-val pairs.
But I am unsure of how to handle the transforms that need to occur between API and page display. Should I write a controller that grabs this data from an Angular service (that in turn talks to my REST api), and then generates strings (to be placed in the template) that get placed in $scope properties? And then write a directive for each $scope element that I want to be placed in the page, and fill in my template with those directive?
It seems strange to write things this way since I'm not sure how that's different from just using curly braces to directly reference the $scope properties. Should I move more of my work into the directive code and trim down the controller, or what?
In short, I am uncertain of how to apportion the workloads and data among the tools Angular provides. I realize there are a lot of options here, but nothing I've read so far jumps out at me for how to organize this properly. If it seems like there's something I'm missing, feel free to just tell me to hit the books again, or read more on a certain subject of the framework.

How do I send a more complex object in angular.js?

http://jsfiddle.net/EjyW4/
Essentially, I am trying to post an array of objects from the client using AngularJS with the resources module, and instead of sending a JSON object, Angular is sending a useless toString representation over the wire.
Unfortunately, the code in the fiddle itself doesn't do much -- the intent is outlined here with more context, though it still is very raw and do not yet resemble anything looking like the right way) But this seems to be an angular issue rather than grails, at least from looking at the Chrome console.
Query String Parameters:
callback:JSON_CALLBACK
tests:%5Bobject+Object%5D,%5Bobject+Object%5D
There seems to be an angular.toJson -- http://docs.angularjs.org/api/angular.toJson -- but it doesn't seem to work in this case. The documentation I've seen doesn't seem to cover more than sending a basic int. If I have to, I'll send over a comma separated string, but this seems like it should be a common use case.
The $resource function actually returns a new $resource object constructor, which you then set properties on, then call methods like save on.
So your problem in your fiddle is you're trying to save a $resource with no data set on it! All you have is a config property, tests, which it doesn't know what to do with.
You instead want to:
Set up your constructor for a new resource using $resource factory/method.
Create a new instance of your new resource.
Set a property on it (eg myNewResource.tests = $scope.tests);
Save it (myNewResource.$save())
http://jsfiddle.net/EjyW4/2/
It looks like what you were trying to do originally is better suited for $http (I put an example of that in the fiddle too).

The best way for extending a model

According the Backbone.js documentation Model-parse does the following:
parse is called whenever a model's data is returned by the server, in
fetch, and save.
To augment models I've already loaded I use Model.parse(). I accomplish this by using fetch to make an additional request for data, then use that data to add properties to an existing model.
Example:
the fetch object is {age: 19}
after the parser will be {age: 19, isAdult: true}
When I perform the save request, in the PUT request I also have other parameters not needed (for example isAdult). I would like to have the original model (without additional parameters in PUT request).
What is the best way to achieve my goal in Backbone?
If I understand your question correctly ....
When backbone talks to a server using a save it sends a complete respresentation of the model. As the docs put it :
The attributes hash (as in set) should contain the attributes you'd
like to change — keys that aren't mentioned won't be altered — but, a
complete representation of the resource will be sent to the server.
So the default behavior is to send the complete model. If you want to implement you're own logic you're going to have to override the sync method. Dig through the expanded backbone code a bit and you'll see this comment above sync :
// Override this function to change the manner in which Backbone persists
// models to the server. You will be passed the type of request, and the model in question.
I would use the default implementation of sync as my starting point.

Resources