ember-data save and find with postgrest

Question

ember-data understands json-api natively ,if we have to integrate ember-data and its save() and find() methods with postgrest style REST calls, where do we need to do changes ?

Do we need to modify client side in ember or some server side logic for mapping with ember-data requirements.

So postgrest REST api calls look like these to get films and their title and competition.name from related table ->

http://localhost:3001/film?select=title,competition{name}
http://localhost:3001/users?select=email::text&id=eq.2&sign_in_count=eq.16

Answer 1

There are two questions here:

1. Is it better to transform to/from JSON API at the server or the client?
2. If transforming in the client, where do transforms to/from JSON API occur?

Is it better to transform to/from JSON API at the server or the client?

The first question is really a matter of preference. I personally prefer having the server emit and accept JSON API format because it allows you to ship fewer lines of JavaScript to the client and there's a tendency for multiple clients to communicate with the same server, so standardizing that makes for faster client application development.

For example, you might have two Ember clients (one general user-facing, one admin-facing), an iOS client, and perhaps another server all requesting to your PostgREST server.

That said, you can also think of the format that PostgREST uses as its own spec and have all the clients adhere to that.

If transforming in the client, where do transforms to/from JSON API occur?

Which brings us to question 2: How do you make Ember Data communicate with a server that does not use the JSON API standard?

This occurs in two places: The Adapter and the Serializer.

The Adapter translates requests for data into the appropriate URL where the data can be found (or added) and initiates requests.

So, "give me the photo with the ID of 22" (store.find('photo', 2)), will ask the adapter (assuming Photo #2 isn't already loaded), "hey, someone wants Photo #2, go fetch it please".

The Adapter will make the request and hand the response over to its Serializer.

The Serializer is responsible for translating the data that comes back into a format that Ember Data understands: JSON API.

Both Adapter and Serializer have methods you can implement to customize their behaviors.

In your case with PostgREST, the best places to start would be implementing your own findRecord on the Adapter and implementing your own normalizeResponse on the Serializer.

The docs for both explain the actions you need to take and what type of value you should return from each method.

These are two of the most basic interfaces. They don't provide a lot of functionality out of the box, but will help you become familiar with how these two objects interact.

Once you're comfortable with this basic interaction, check out the sample RestAdapter and RestSerializer for ideas on how to rely on some of the conventions Adapters and Serializers have to offer to clean up any custom code you've written.