Actual property name on REQUIRED_CHILDREN connetion - relay

In relay, when using REQUIRED_CHILDREN like so:
return [{
type: 'REQUIRED_CHILDREN',
children: [
Relay.QL`
fragment on Payload {
myConnection (first: 50) {
edges {
node {
${fragment}
}
}
}
}
`
]
}]
and reading off the response through the onSuccess callback:
Relay.Store.commitUpdate(
new AboveMutation({ }), { onFailure, onSuccess }
)
the response turns the property myConnection into a hashed name (i.e. __myConnection652K), which presumably is used to prevent connection/list conflicts inside the relay store.
However, since this is a REQUIRED_CHILDREN and I'm manually reading myConnection, it just prevents access to it.
Is there an way to get the actual property names when using the onSuccess callback?

Just as Ahmad wrote: using REQUIRED_CHILDREN means you're not going to store the results. The consequence of it is that data supplied to the callback is in raw shape (nearly as it came from server) and data masking does not applies.
Despite not storing the data, it seems to be no reason (though core team member's opinion would be certainly more appropriate here) not to convert it to client style shape. This is the newest type of mutation, so there is a chance such feature was accidentally omitted. This is normal that queries are transformed to the server style shape, the opposite transformation could take place as well. However until now is has not been needed - while saving the data to the store and updating components props, transformation was made meanwhile. Currently most of Relay team is highly focused on rewriting much of the implementation, so I would not expect this issue to be improved very soon.
So again, solution proposed by Ahmed to convert type to GraphQLList seems to be the easiest and most reliable. If for any reason you want to stand by connection, there is an option to take GraphQL fragment supplied as children (actually its parsed form stored in __cachedFragment__ attribute of that original fragment) and traverse it to obtain the serializationKey for desired field (eg __myConnection652K).

Related

How can I get and use the properties I need from this GraphQL API using Dart?

Before you start reading: I have looked at the GraphQL documentation, but my usecase is so specific and I only need the data once, and therefore I allow myself to ask the community for help on this one to save some time and frustration (not planning to learn GraphQL in the future)
Intro
I am a CS student developing an app for Flutter on the side, where I need information about the name and location of every bus stop in a specific county in Norway. Luckily, there's an open GraphQL API for this (API URL: https://api.entur.io/stop-places/v1/graphql). The thing is, I don't know how to query a GraphQL API, and I do not want to spend time learning it as I am only going to fetch the data once and be done with it.
Here's the IDE for the API: https://api.entur.io/stop-places/v1/ide
And this is the exact query I want to perform as I want to fetch bus stops located in the county of Trondheim:
{
stopPlace(stopPlaceType: onstreetBus, countyReference: "Trondheim") {
name {
value
}
... on StopPlace {
quays {
geometry {
coordinates
}
}
}
}
}
The problem with this query though, is that I don't get any data when passing "Trondheim" to the countyReference (without countyReference I get the data, but not for Trondheim). I've tried using the official municipal number for the county as well without any luck, and the documentation of the API is rather poor... Maybe this is something I'll have to contact the people responsible for the API to figure out, which shouldn't be a problem.
But now back to the real problem - how can I make this query using the GraphQL package for Dart? Here's the package I'm planning to use: (https://pub.dev/packages/graphql)
I want to create a bus stop object for each bus stop, and I want to put them all in a list. Here is my bus stop model:
class BusStop with ChangeNotifier {
final String id;
final String name;
final LatLng location;
BusStop({
this.id,
this.name,
this.location
});
}
When it comes to authentication, here's what the documentation says:
This API is open under NLOD licence, however, it is required that all consumers identify themselves by using the header ET-Client-Name. Entur will deploy strict rate-limiting policies on API-consumers who do not identify with a header and reserves the right to block unidentified consumers. The structure of ET-Client-Name should be: "company - application"
Header examples: "brakar - journeyplanner" "fosen_utvikling - departureboard" "norway_bussekspress - nwy-app"
Link to API documentation: https://developer.entur.org/pages-nsr-nsr
Would be great to know how I should go about this as well! I'm grateful for every answers to this, I know I am being lazy here as of learning GraphQL, but for my usecase I thought it would take less time and frustration by asking here!
Getting the query right
First of all you seem to have GraphQL quite figured out. There isn't really much more to it than what you are doing. What queries an API supports depends on the API. The problem you seem to have is more related to the specific API that you are using. I might have figured the right query out for you and if not I will quickly explain what I did and maybe you can improve the query yourself:
{
stopPlace(stopPlaceType: onstreetBus, municipalityReference: "KVE:TopographicPlace:5001") {
name {
value
}
... on StopPlace {
quays {
geometry {
coordinates
}
}
}
}
}
So to get to this I started finding out more about "Trondheim" bei using the topographicPlace query.
{
topographicPlace(query: "Trondheim") {
id
name {
value
}
topographicPlaceType
parentTopographicPlace {
id
name {
value
}
}
}
}
If you do that you will see that "Trondheim" is not a county according to the API: "topographicPlaceType": "municipality". I have no idea what municipality is but the is a different filter for this type on the query that you provided. Then putting "Trondheim" there didn't yield any results so I tried the ID of Trondheim. This now gives me a bunch of results.
About the GraphQL client that you are using:
This seems to be an "Apollo Client" clone in Dart. Apollo Client is a heavy piece of software that comes with a lot of awesome features when used in a frontend application. You probably just want to make a single GraphQL request from a backend. I would recommend using a simple HTTP client to send a POST request to the GraphQL API and a JSON body (don't forget content type header) with the following properties: query containing the query string from above and variables a JSON object mapping variable names to values (only needed if you decide to add variables to your query.

Redux store design – two arrays or one

I guess this could be applied to any Redux-backed system, but imagine we are building simple React Native app that supports two actions:
fetching a list of messages from a remote API
the ability to mark those messages as having been read
At the moment I have a messagesReducer that defines its state as...
const INITIAL_STATE = {
messages: [],
read: []
};
The messages array stores the objects from the remote API, for example...
messages: [
{ messageId: 1234, title: 'Hello', body: 'Example' },
{ messageId: 5678, title: 'Goodbye', body: 'Example' }
];
The read array stores the numerical IDs of the messages that have been read plus some other meta data, for example...
read: [
{ messageId: 1234, meta: 'Something' },
{ messageId: 5678, meta: 'Time etc' }
];
In the React component that displays a message in a list, I run this test to see if the message should be shown as being read...
const isRead = this.props.read.filter(m => m.messageId == this.props.currentMessage.messageId).length > 0;
This is working great at the moment. Obviously I could have put a boolean isRead property on the message object but the main advantage of the above arrangement is that the entire contents of the messages array can be overwritten by what comes from the remote API.
My concern is about how well this will scale, and how expensive the array.filter method is when the array gets large. Also keep in mind that the app displays a list of messages that could be hundreds of messages, so the filtering is happening for each message in the list. It works on my modern iPhone, but it might not work so well on less powerful phones.
I'm also thinking I might be missing some well established best practice pattern for this sort of thing.
Let's call the current approach Option 1. I can think of two other approaches...
Option 2 is to put isRead and readMeta properties on the message object. This would make rendering the message list super quick. However when we get the list of messages from the remote API, instead of just overwriting the current array we would need to step through the JSON returned by the API and carefully update and delete the messages in the local store.
Option 3 is keep the current read array but also to add isRead and readMeta properties on the message object. When we get the list of messages from the remote API we can overwrite the entire messages array, and then loop through the read array and copy the data into the corresponding message objects. This would also need to happen whenever the user reads a message – data would be duplicated in two places. This makes me feel uncomfortable, but maybe it's ok.
I've struggled to find many other examples of this type of store, but it could be that I'm just Googling the wrong thing. I'm quite new to Redux and some of my terminology is probably incorrect.
I'd really value any thoughts on this.
Using reselect you can memorize the results of the array.filter to prevent the array from being filtered when neither the messages or read arrays have changed, which will allow you to use Option 1.
In this way, you can easily store the raw data in your reducers, and also access the computed data efficiently for display. A benefit from this is that you are decoupling the requirements for data structure and storage from the requirements for the way the data is displayed.
You can learn more about efficiently computing derived data in the redux docs
How about using a lookup table object, where the id's are the keys.
This way you don't need to filter nor loop to see if a certain message id is there. just check if the object holds a key with the corresponding id:
So in your case it will be:
const isRead = !!this.props.read[this.props.currentMessage.messageId];
Small running example:
const read = {
1234: {
meta: 'Something'
},
5678: {
meta: 'Time etc'
}
};
const someMessage = {id: 5678};
const someOtherMessage = {id: 999};
const isRead = id => !!read[id];
console.log('someMessage is ',isRead(someMessage.id));
console.log('someOtherMessage is ',isRead(someOtherMessage.id));
Edit
I recommend reading about Normalizing State Shape from the redux documentations.
There are great examples of designing and organizing the data and state.

Unable to use Ember data with JSONAPI and fragments to support nested JSON data

Overview
I'm using Ember data and have a JSONAPI. Everything works fine until I have a more complex object (let's say an invoice for a generic concept) with an array of items called lineEntries. The line entries are not mapped directly to a table so need to be stored as raw JSON object data. The line entry model also contains default and computed values. I wish to store the list data as a JSON object and then when loaded back from the store that I can manipulate it as normal in Ember as an array of my model.
What I've tried
I've looked at and tried several approaches, the best appear to be (open to suggestions here!):
Fragments
Replace problem models with fragments
I've tried making the line entry model a fragment and then referencing the fragment on the invoice model as a fragmentArray. Line entries add to the array as normal but default values don't work (should they?). It creates the object and I can store it in the backend but when I return it, it fails with either a normalisation issue or a serialiser issue. Can anyone state the format the data be returned in? It's confusing as normalising the data seems to require JSONAPI but the fragment requires JSON serialiser. I've tried several combinations but no luck so far. My line entries don't have actual ids as the data is saved and loaded as a block. Is this an issue?
DS.EmbeddedRecordsMixin
Although not supported in JSONAPI, it sounds possible to use JSONAPI and then switch to JSONSerializer or RESTSerializer for the problem models. If this is possible could someone give me a working example and the JSON format that should be returned by the API? I have header authorisation and other such data so would I still be able to set this at the application level for all request not using my JSONAPI?
Ember-data-save-relationships
I found an add on here that provides an add on to do this. It seems more involved than the other approaches but when I've tried this I can send the data up by setting a the data as embedded. Great! But although it saves it doesn't unwrap it correct and I'm back with the same issues.
Custom serialiser
Replace the models serialiser with something that takes the data and sends it as plain JSON data and then deserialises back into something Ember can use. This sounds similar to the above but I do the heavy lifting. The only reason to do this is because all examples for the above solutions are quite light and don't really show how to set this up with an actual JSONAPI set up that would need it.
Where I am and what I need
Basically all approaches lead to saving the JSON fine but the return JSON from the server not being the correct format or the deserialisation failing but it's unclear what it should be or what needs to change without breaking the existing JSONAPI models that work fine.
If anyone know the format for return API data it may resolve this. I've tried JSONAPI with lineEntries returning the same format as it saved. I've tried placing relationship sections like the add on suggested and I've also tried placing relationship only data against the entries and an include section with all the references. Any help on this would be great as I've learned a lot through this but deadlines a looming and I can't see a viable solution that doesn't break as much as it fixes.
If you are looking for return format for relational data from the API server you need to make sure of the following:
Make sure the relationship is defined in the ember model
Return all successes with a status code of 200
From there you need to make sure you return relational data correctly. If you've set the ember model for the relationship to {async: true} you need only return the id of the relational model - which should also be defined in ember. If you do not set {async: true}, ember expects all relational data to be included.
return data with relationships in JSON API specification
Example:
models\unicorn.js in ember:
import DS from 'ember-data';
export default DS.Model.extend({
user: DS.belongsTo('user', {async: true}),
staticrace: DS.belongsTo('staticrace',{async: true}),
unicornName: DS.attr('string'),
unicornLevel: DS.attr('number'),
experience: DS.attr('number'),
hatchesAt: DS.attr('number'),
isHatched: DS.attr('boolean'),
raceEndsAt: DS.attr('number'),
isRacing: DS.attr('boolean'),
});
in routes\unicorns.js on the api server on GET/:id:
var jsonObject = {
"data": {
"type": "unicorn",
"id": unicorn.dataValues.id,
"attributes": {
"unicorn-name" : unicorn.dataValues.unicornName,
"unicorn-level" : unicorn.dataValues.unicornLevel,
"experience" : unicorn.dataValues.experience,
"hatches-at" : unicorn.dataValues.hatchesAt,
"is-hatched" : unicorn.dataValues.isHatched,
"raceEndsAt" : unicorn.dataValues.raceEndsAt,
"isRacing" : unicorn.dataValues.isRacing
},
"relationships": {
"staticrace": {
"data": {"type": "staticrace", "id" : unicorn.dataValues.staticRaceId}
},
"user":{
"data": {"type": "user", "id" : unicorn.dataValues.userId}
}
}
}
}
res.status(200).json(jsonObject);
In ember, you can call this by chaining model functions. For example when this unicorn goes to race in controllers\unicornracer.js:
raceUnicorn() {
if (this.get('unicornId') === '') {return false}
else {
return this.store.findRecord('unicorn', this.get('unicornId', { backgroundReload: false})).then(unicorn => {
return this.store.findRecord('staticrace', this.get('raceId')).then(staticrace => {
if (unicorn.getProperties('unicornLevel').unicornLevel >= staticrace.getProperties('raceMinimumLevel').raceMinimumLevel) {
unicorn.set('isRacing', true);
unicorn.set('staticrace', staticrace);
unicorn.set('raceEndsAt', Math.floor(Date.now()/1000) + staticrace.get('duration'))
this.set('unicornId', '');
return unicorn.save();
}
else {return false;}
});
});
}
}
The above code sends a PATCH to the api server route unicorns/:id
Final note about GET,POST,DELETE,PATCH:
GET assumes you are getting ALL of the information associated with a model (the example above shows a GET response). This is associated with model.findRecord (GET/:id)(expects one record), model.findAll(GET/)(expects an array of records), model.query(GET/?query=&string=)(expects an array of records), model.queryRecord(GET/?query=&string=)(expects one record)
POST assumes you at least return at least what you POST to the api server from ember , but can also return additional information you created on the apiServer side such as createdAt dates. If the data returned is different from what you used to create the model, it'll update the created model with the returned information. This is associated with model.createRecord(POST/)(expects one record).
DELETE assumes you return the type, and the id of the deleted object, not data or relationships. This is associated with model.deleteRecord(DELETE/:id)(expects one record).
PATCH assumes you return at least what information was changed. If you only change one field, for instance in my unicorn model, the unicornName, it would only PATCH the following:
{
data: {
"type":"unicorn",
"id": req.params.id,
"attributes": {
"unicorn-name" : "This is a new name!"
}
}
}
So it only expects a returned response of at least that, but like POST, you can return other changed items!
I hope this answers your questions about the JSON API adapter. Most of this information was originally gleamed by reading over the specification at http://jsonapi.org/format/ and the ember implementation documentation at https://emberjs.com/api/data/classes/DS.JSONAPIAdapter.html

RxJS Is there a way to make ajax get request with params without building url

I am having trouble passing params to ajax get request.
Let's suppose i have to pass params {category: 'cat', type: 'type', searchKey: 'key' } to the url /search and I have the code below:
action$.ofType('QUERY')
.debounceTime(500)
.switchMap(action =>
ajax.get('/search', {//pass some parameters},)
.map(result => ({
type: 'FETCH_SUCCESS',
payload: result.response,
})),
As I am new to RxJs, Please suggest me the right way of doing this.
While it is technically permissible to provide a request body (and corresponding Content-Type header like application/x-www-form-urlencoded) for GET requests, nearly all servers assume GET do not contain one. Instead, POST (creation of a document) or PUT (updating a document) is used when a body is neccesary.
However, if what you're asking for is simply regular old query params, that's pretty normal but there is no built-in support in RxJS for converting an Object to a query string--mostly because there is no official spec on how complex objects/arrays should be serialized so every server has notable differences once you do more than simple key -> value.
Instead, you just include them in the URL. I realize you said "without building url" but the lack of a spec means RxJS will likely never add support because it's highly opinionated. You can just manually generate the string yourself or use a third-party utility that has a convention you like.
ajax.get(`/search?query=${query}&something=${something`)
// or using something like https://www.npmjs.com/package/query-string
ajax.get(`/search?${queryString.stringify(params)}`)
If you're interested in further understanding the opinionated nature of query params, consider how you might serialize { foo: [{ bar: 1 }, { bar: 2 }] }. Some might say it should be ?foo[0][bar]=1&foo[1][bar]=2 but I have also seen ?foo[][bar]=1&foo[][bar]=2, ?foo[bar]=1&foo[bar]=2, and other variants. Thing get even more hairy when dealing with duplicates. ?foo=true&foo=false should foo be true or false? (it's an opinion hehe)

REST API Design for Updating Object Graph

I'm designing a REST API and am looking for the recommended best practice for updating object graphs. My question is best explained in an example, so let's say that I have a GET resource as follows:
URI: /people/123
This URI returns an object graph like this:
{
"name":"Johnny",
"country":{"id":100,"name":"Canada"},
"likes":[
{"id":5,"name":"Fruit"},
{"id":100,"name":"Sports"}
]
}
When allowing the API consumer to update this resource, how would you expect the object to be updated via PUT or PATCH? Updating the "name" property is pretty straightforward, but I'm not certain about "country" or "likes", as the consumer can only only change the relationship to other objects and not create new ones.
Here is one way to request the update:
{
"name":"Bob",
"countryId":200
"likeIds":[3,10,22]
}
This update will change the resource to the following:
{
"name":"Bob",
"country":{"id":200,"name":"United States of America"},
"likes":[
{"id":3,"name":"Cars"},
{"id":10,"name":"Planes"},
{"id":22,"name":"Real Estate"}
]
}
This design explicitly and clearly asks the consumer to only update the "IDs" of the "Person", but I'm concerned that the object graph for a PUT/PATCH looks different than the GET, making the API hard to learn and remember. So another option is to request the PUT/PATCH as follows:
{
"name":"Bob",
"country":{"id":100},
"likes":[
{"id":3},
{"id":10},
{"id":22}
]
}
This will yield the same change as the previous update and does not alter the object graph. However, it doesn't make it clear to the API consumer that only the "IDs" can be updated.
In this scenario, which approach is recommended?
In my opinion you should stay with the same structure for both, GET and PUT requests. Why? Because it's quite common to map JSON/XML data into objects, and most (if not all) software that do the actual mapping work best if JSON schema is always the same.
So your webservice should accept a following JSON code:
{
"name":"Joe",
"country":{"id":200,"name":"United States of America"},
"likes":[
{"id":5,"name":"Fruit"}
]
}
However it doesn't have to take into account the country name and may focus only on the country id.