referencejs

Referencejs

Reference JS lets you create references to any location in a JSON tree. This is useful for

• For normalizing and denormalizing data without needing an explicit schema
• For referencing data that doesn't yet exist in the store (e.g. async data)
• For normalizing and denormalizing immutable data

A Basic Example

import {
  createReference,
  resolveReference,
  dereference,
} from 'referencejs';

const user = {
  id: 'abc',
  name: 'John Doe'
};
const reference = createReference(['users', user.id]);

let store = {};
store = resolveReference(store, reference, user);

dereference(store, reference) === user;

dereferencing using smartDereference

Dereferencing one reference at a time isn't that useful. smartDereference dereferences every reference in an object. This is useful if you have data structures that differ significantly from your store

import {
  createReference,
  smartDereference,
} from 'referencejs';

const store = {
  users: {
    user1: {
      name: 'John Doe'
    },
    user2: {
      name: 'Jane Doe'
    },
    user3: {
      name: 'Billy Doe'
    },

    user4: {
      name: 'Lucy Doe'
    }
  }
};

const john = createReference(['users', 'user1']);
const jane = createReference(['users', 'user2']);
const billy = createReference(['users', 'user3']);
const lucy = createReference(['users', 'user4']);

const familyTreeReferences = {
  father: john,
  mother: jane,
  children: [billy, lucy]
};

// familyTree will contain the user objects instead of the references  
const familyTree = smartDereference(store, familyTree);

What's a Reference?

A reference is an object that contains everything needed to find a value in a JSON object (called the store). The signature looks like:

{
  path : Array<number|string>
}