datacore

Description

Data model for RESTful API clients, made simple. In essence, an ES6 class with support for typed schemas, CRUD methods with schema conversion, and inheritance helpers for ES5 environments. Straightforward, lightweight, and has good code coverage via tests and Flow.

This has seen a complete rewrite. I've slimmed the library down tremendously to focus on the most vital features. See 1.0.x to compare.

Datacore is packaged in a format compatible with both AngularJS and CommonJS.

Why Bother?

Rich web applications consume and generate lots of data. It's common to organise it by breaking it up into well-defined "models" that correspond to resources on a RESTful API backend. A model library handles the boilerplate code so you don't have to.

Installation

AngularJS

Install via bower:

bower i --save datacore
# or
bower i --save-dev datacore

The angular build uses $q and $http instead of es6-promise and xhttp, but still depends on lodash. Make sure you have window._ available.

You'll need main-bower-files in your build system to organise dependency order. Datacore specifies angular and lodash as dependencies but doesn't bundle them. main-bower-files makes sure they'll be loaded in the right order.

In your app's configuration, require the module and factory Datacore.

// ES5
angular.module('MyApp', ['Datacore'])
.factory('Record', ['Datacore', function(Datacore) {

  // Your base model.
  var Record = Datacore.derive('Record');

  // Base URL to your server.
  Record.prototype.$path = function() {return '/my-api-url'};

  // Example schema.
  Record.prototype.$schema = {
    id: '',
    value: null
  }

  return Record;

}]);

// ES6
angular.module('MyApp', ['Datacore'])
.factory('Record', ['Datacore', function(Datacore) {

  // Your base model.
  class Record extends Datacore {
    // Base URL to your server.
    $path() {return '/my-api-url'}

    // Example schema (immutable).
    get $schema() {return {
      id: '',
      value: null
    }}
  }

  return Record;

}]);

CommonJS

To use CommonJS, you need a build system with browserify or webpack.

Install via npm:

npm i --save-dev datacore

Then require in your application:

var Datacore = require('datacore');

See basic configuration above.

ToDo / WIP.

The documentation needs a complete rewrite now.