mobx-decorated-models

Decorators for creating model type structures with mobx

mobx-decorated-models is a collection of es7 decorators to make a class observable and serializable.

Introduction

Mobx makes state management super simple, but it doesn't offer an opinion on how to get data in and out of the observed data structures.

Serializr takes care of that nicely.

Combining the two libraries isn’t difficult, but then you end up specifing each attribute twice; once so Mobx will observe it, and once to create a schema for Serializr.

This library is a collection of decorators that co-ordinates making fields both observable and serializable.

While it’s at it, it also handles model lookups so different models can refer to one another regardless of import order. When one model refers to another, a reference of the requirement is stored and then later resolved when the class becomes known.

Example

import { model, field, session, belongsTo, hasMany, identifier } from 'mobx-decorated-models';

@model
export class Box {
    @identifier id;
    @field width  = 0;
    @field height = 0;
    @field depth  = 0;

    @computed get volume() {
        return this.width * this.height * this.depth;
    }

    @hasMany items;
    @belongsTo container;
    @belongsTo({ model: 'Address' }) warehouse;
}

additional examples used for testing are located in specs/test-models.js

boxes = @observable.array([])
fetch('/my/api/endpoints/boxes/1.json').then(function(response) {
  boxes.concat(Box.deserialize(response.json()));
});

const box = Box.deserialize({ id: 1, width: 2, height: 3, depth: 8 }); // returns an instance of Box
console.log(box.volume);      // => 48
console.log(box.serialize()); // => { id: 1, width: 2, height: 3, depth: 8, items: [] }

Controlling model lookups

By default, the class @model decorator uses the name property of each class as a lookup key so that hasMany and belongsTo relation ships can be established.

This allows things like the below mappings to still work even though the two files can't easily include each other:

// chair.js

import { model, belongsTo } from 'mobx-decorated-models';

@model
class Chair {
    belongsTo 'table'
}


// table.js
import { model, hasMany } from 'mobx-decorated-models';

@model
class Table {
    hasMany({ model: 'Chair' }) 'seats'
}

This works well enough, however using the name property is fragile, since it relies on the class name not changing. Certain JS minimizers may rename classes.

If custom logic is needed, it's possible to supply custom "record" and "lookup" functions.

Example that uses a static identifiedBy property.

import { model, lookupModelUsing, rememberModelUsing } from 'mobx-decorated-models';
import { capitalize, singularize } from 'utility';

const Models = {};

lookupModelUsing((propertyName, propertyOptions) => {
   return Models[propertyOptions.className] ||
       Models[capitalize(propertyName)] ||
           Models[capitalize(singularize(propertyName))];
});
rememberModelUsing(klass => Models[klass.identifiedBy] = klass);

@model
class ATestingModel {
    static identifiedBy = 'test';
    belongsTo document;
}

@model
class Document {
    static identifiedBy = 'document';
    hasMany({ className: 'test' }) testRuns;
}

Decorators

model

Marks a class as serializable.

It adds a few convenience methods to classes:

• static deserialize method. Used to turn JSON structure into a model (or collection of models)
• an update method. Updates a model's attributes and child associations.
• serialize. Converts the model's attributes and it's associations to JSON.

However, it's primary purpose is to remember classes for hasMany/belongsTo lookups. See discussion above regarding lookupModelUsing and rememberModelUsing.

identifier

The primary key for the model

field

marks a class property as observable and serializable.

The type of field can be set to array or object by specifying options.

example:

class Foo {
  @field({ type: 'object' }) options; // will default to an observable map
  @field({ type: 'array'  }) tags;    // defaults to []
}

const foo = new Foo();
foo.tags.push('one');
foo.options.set('one', 1);
foo.serialize(); // => { tags: ['one'], options: { one: 1 } }

belongsTo

Makes a property as referring to another model. Will attempt to map the referenced class based on the name, i.e. a property named box will look for a class named Box.

Optionally can be given an option object with a className property to control the mapping.

example:

class Foo {
  @belongsTo bar; // will look for a `Bar` class
  @belongsTo({ className: 'Person' }) name; // looks for class `Person`
}

hasMany

Makes a property as belonging to an array of model. Sets the default value to an observable array

As in belongsTo, can be optionally given an option object with a className property to control the mapping.

Future plans

• Sessions: properties that will be set from JSON but won't be serialized. https://github.com/mobxjs/serializr/pull/32 is needed before this can be supported