modeled-mobx

Create model relationships with mobx

modeled-mobx is a lightweight layer on top of MobX 6 to easily serialize and hydrate javascript classes to/from JSON

Introduction

modeled-mobx replaces mobx's makeObservable with a modelize function. modelize adds "field" and "model" properties to configure the model's fields as observables that get and set their values when serialize and hydrate respectively are called.

It also includes a field and model decorator that can optionally be used instead of specifiying each property on the options passed to modelize

Example

import { modelize, field, model, hydrate, serialize, getParentOf } from 'modeled-mobx'
import { observable, computed } from 'mobx'

class Item {
    name = ''      // all properties MUST be given values, see edge cases section below
    material = ''
    get box() { return getParentOf<Box>(this) }
    constructor() {
        modelize(this, {
            name: field,
            material: observable,
        })
    }
}

// an example using decorators
export class Box {

    @field width = 0;
    @field height = 0;
    @field depth = 0;

    @observable serial: number = 0; // observable from mobx will be set by hydrate
    // and initialized by modelize.  It will not be serialized
    @computed get volume() {
        return this.width * this.height * this.depth;
    }

    @model(Item) items: Item[] = []; // note: this is an array of "item" models
    @model(Item) defaultItem?: Item = undefined; // and this one is a single model

    constructor() {
        modelize(this) // individual fields do not need to be specified when using decorators
    }
}


const box = hydrate(Box, {
    width: 10, height: 10, depth: 10, serial: 1234,
    items: [{ name: 'Box #1' }, { name: 'Box #2' }],
    defaultItem: { name: 'Fruit' },
})

console.log(box.items[1].name, box.volume) // Box #2, 1000
console.log(box.items[1].box === box) // true 
console.log(serialize(box))
// {
//   width: 10, height: 10, depth: 10,
//   items: [{ name: 'Box #1' }, { name: 'Box #2' }],
//    defaultItem: { name: 'Fruit' }
//  }

Edge cases

properties must be assigned a value

When using Javascript, if a property is not initialized, Mobx will raise an exception: Cannot apply 'observable' to '<property name>': Field not found

for instance:

class Item {
    name
    constructor() {
        modelize(this, {
            name: field,
        })
    }
}

Will trigger the exception, but this usage is fine:

class Item {
    name = ''
    constructor() {
        modelize(this, {
            name: field,
        })
    }
}

This seems to be a limitation of ES6. If a field is present but not given a value, it will be "undefined", and MobX thinks that it's not present.