Learning Ember.js and have a reasonable understanding of getters and setters (accessors) through Ruby and Java.
In Ember/Javascript, I seem to have a very serious lack of understanding. For instance in my controllers/models, I don't have a clue whether to use object.set(property,value) or refer them directly object.property = 'value'
As an example, in my earlier question (How to get Model values in Controller), part of working answer was to use object.name instead of object.get('name'). It worked but I miss the basic understanding.
Would appreciate some clarifications.
The rule is: You should always use .get()/.set() when you are in your .js-files. When you are in your templates (.hbs or other) you should not (you can't do it).
If you access a property via myObj.myProp it will work for regular properties, but computed ones won't. If you set a property via myObj.myProp you can still get the value back, but bindings and observers won't be notified that it has changed and won't updated properly.
This is a design decision by the Ember team which allows for efficient bindings/observers instead of doing dirty-checking of all bound/observed properties (which is what Angular currently does).
I made a small jsbin showing this. Three values are bound initially, the button then changes one and logs it into the console (so make sure to have the console open), the binding isn't updated but the value can be retrieved. It then tries to get a computed property via myObj.myProp which returns undefined and then the regular way.
http://emberjs.jsbin.com/cipapaxevi/2/
Also, as a side note. If you want a property thats on a child object to what you have you can access it via myObj.get('myProp.myOtherProp') instead of doing myObj.get('myProp').get('myOtherProp'). It saves you from the worry that myProp could return null or undefined.
That's the way Javascript works and it's one of its disadvantages. It doesn't have public/private proprieties nor methods. Therefore, we should rely on good comments in the code.
I am not an expert in Ember, but when I face the similar problems in JS I usually look at the source code of the library to see how it's constructed and then make a decision. That's why probably js libraries are usually shipped with both min and dev versions.
However, if the object has special methods to access its properties then they are there for a reason, so use them instead of the direct access to the properties. As I said above, in Js you can't make properties be private or protected.
Related
I'm trying to build a simple binding framework in JavaScript. I want to have a model with getters and setters that keeps everything consistent, i.e. updating one property can affect others and then JavaScript that then binds that to fields in the page.
The problem I'm having is I need to add some extra code to the setters on the model when I bind so that updating a property executes code that's already in the setter to keep the model consistent and then update the bound input(s).
I thought about renaming the existing property and adding a new property with the original name which could set the original property and update the input but I can't see a way to rename the field.
Is there any way to either rename a property with a getter/setter, modify a setter or get the code in a setter so I can copy that?
Alternatively, is there any other way to achieve what I'm trying to do?
I'm trying to keep separation between business logic (the model) and the UI (the html) without requiring the person writing the model to have to think about the UI / binding at all.
I also don't want to use any of the big libraries like Angular or Knockout as they're a lot of code to include in the page for pretty limited requirements, plus this is a project we've been developing / maintaining for 20 years+ so we don't want to be using a library that has a history of massive breaking changes (Angular).
We currently need to support IE10/11 and modern versions of Chrome / Edge / Firefox / Safari (iOS and Mac). However, if there's something that doesn't support all of these, we're open to doing a "nice" way with a "nasty" fallback until we can drop IE support.
If it makes any difference, we are using TypeScript to write the JavaScript.
Edit:
Since submitting my question, I've found this. It says you can rename a property with:
Object.defineProperty(o, new_key, Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor(o, old_key));
delete o[old_key];
This is working for renaming simple variable type properties but not for renaming properties with getters and setters. I'm not sure why, although my properties with getters / setters return false when I do hasOwnProperty on them.
Edit2:
Turns out that TypeScript was adding the properties against the prototype instead of the object and this is why they weren't accessible. I called Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor(o.__proto__, old_key) instead and this gave me the descriptor I needed.
I've found that you can edit / extend the setter by doing the following:
var propDescriptor = Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor(model, key);
propDescriptor.set = function (value) {
setter.call(model, value);
//Do extra stuff here
}
Object.defineProperty(model, key, propDescriptor);
This means that the property still maintains consistency while allowing you to extend it to update the bound input field.
We are building a form-based app that has a complex object with many levels of nested properties.
So far, I have created a simple experiment with a single view model with one object. The experiment has fields that are bound to object properties, which successfully display the data. However, when changing the fields, the object does not seem to be updated.
What should I do to make sure form input propagates throughout the view model and into the template?
You need to use getter method in app.js as below,
get swaggerString() {
console.log(this.swagger);
const swaggerStringified = JSON.stringify(this.swagger);
return swaggerStringified;
}
In your HTML, change method to property,
${swaggerString}
Updated your GIST,
https://gist.github.com/anonymous/3b85820d66c2dfbf0f770208a7c8b63f
Hope this helps!
What are you planning to do in the real app?
The accepted answer only answers how to solve your problem as posted in the gist. I'm guessing your real app doesn't need to display JSON data.
If you are just wanting to display deeply nested object properties, then that is simple, you simply bind to those properties themselves. See here: https://gist.run/?id=5af5c22be4b49c0e3fef327e3d8b986b
<pre>
{
"name": "${swagger.name}",
"version": "${swagger.version}"
}
</pre>
You can even go arbitrarily deep in to an object tree, e.g. ${foo.bar.baz.ball.foop}.
The thing to understand is that Aurelia observes for changes to whatever you tell it to observe. When you tell it to simply observe an property that is an object, it can only watch for changes to the property itself. This means it will only see a change if you assign a different object to the property. It does not watch every property on the object for changes for performance reasons (and also due to Object.observe being cancelled).
All hope is not lost, though. Please respond with some specifics and I'll try to help you out better.
There appear to be a number of different ways how to access properties of a Sencha (Touch) model. However, I don't seem to be able to find proper documentation of which is the "correct" way of doing it.
Model creation
var model = Ext.create('MyApp.model.MyModel', {
name: value,
foo: bar,
...
})
Property access
model.get('name') or model.set('name', newValue)
model.data.name or model.data.name = newValue
model.raw.name seems to always return a string no matter what the data type in the model definition is?
Let's sort this all out:
get and set methods are the intended accessors for model field values.
model.data is the object that stores the client side model value, that is that have been converted from the data received from the server proxy using the fields configuration (type, convert method, etc.).
model.raw is the raw data that was received from the server proxy, before it was converted to client side application domain model values. You should avoid using it, or you will tie yourself to your proxy/server.
model['name']: as you've said, it doesn't work. Don't hope for it to come back (I don't even really understand that it worked at one point).
Now, which one should you use? Clearly, the last two ones are already out of the match.
The model.data object should give you the expected result in most cases (see bellow), and should give you a marginal performance gain other calling a function.
However, IMO you should always prefer to use the getters and setters, for two reasons.
First, it might happen that someone in your team (or you from the past) decides that the getter/setter is a good point to add some custom logic. In this case, bypassing the accessor by using the data object directly will also bypass this logic, and yield unpredictable result.
Secondly, getters and setters make it really easier to debug some situations, by making it easy to know from where modifications of the model values are coming. I mean, if one day you were to ask yourself "f**k, why is my model field value changing to this??". If all the code uses the getters, you'll just have to put a breakpoint in there, and you'll catch the culprit hand in bag. On the other hand, if the incriminated code uses the data object directly, you'll be stuck to do a whole project search for... You can't tell exactly what... data.name =? data['name'] =? name:? etc.
Now that I think about it, there is yet another reason. A deprecated one apparently. But the data object name used to be customizable using this persistenceProperty option. So, in some cases, the data object won't even be available, and code doing model.data.name instead of model[model.persistenceProperty].name would crash, plain and simple.
Short answer: use the accessors.
I am working on a JavaScript application with a server-side component. The aim is to have multiple different objects on a canvas that are synchronized (i.e., have the same appearance) between multiple browsers. The synchronization is done by the server-side component which broadcasts the individual changes to all browsers. Whenever an object changes, it has to notify the server about which will then take care of notifying the other browsers.
The objects on the canvas are represented by JavaScript objects whose attributes determine the appearance for the user. Of course, not all of the attributes are important for the appearance. Hence, only changes of important attributes have to be transmitted to the other browsers. There are different 'classes' of objects, but all objects 'inherit' from a common 'superclass' (I know, the class inheritance terminology doesn't really work in JavaScript, but in this case, I think it is easier that way).
Now, I have some trouble to send the client-server notifications in an elegant way. Currently, I have setter-methods for all the important attributes of the different objects. These setter-methods call a function which sends the notifications to the server.
I don't really like that solution, since it introduces much boilerplate code. Ideally, when I create a new object, I would like to be able to just specify the important attributes an be done with it. The logic that takes care of monitoring the changes of these attributes could be inside the 'superclass'. But I have no idea how to implement this. Maybe there is a way to build the setters dynamically at runtime? Or maybe there is some other way I did not think about?
If anyone can think of a solution to this problem, I would be glad to hear about it.
Thanks in advance!
Edit:
I had to revoke the accepted answer (creating getters and setters dynamically via Object.defineProperty) since though I thought it would solve my problem, it doesn't really. I now get notified when a property is changed via direct attribute assignment which fires the setter, e.g.:
SynchronizedObject.importantProp = 'someValue';
But as I noticed, in many cases the importantProp is some more complex object. And those objects are usually updated via the getter, not the setter.
SynchronizedObject.importantProp.x = 'someValue';
As far as I can see, I have no chance to notice changes done in this way with my dynamic getters/setters implementation. To use it, I have to change the way I am accessing my objects. Something that works:
prop = SynchronizedObject.importantProp;
prop.x = 'someValue';
SynchronizedObject.importantProp = prop;
That way, the setter is used and everything works out fine. But this feels really awkward and I don't want to have to think about the synchronization every time, I set a property. So it seems to me, the solution is not really usable.
Can anyone help?
How about one set function?
MyObj.prototype.set = function(key, value) {
this[key] = value;
// do other things
};
You could combine this with an EventEmitter implementation to make it easy to observe changes.
This is exactly what __defineSetter()__ is intended to support. Check out John Ressig's JavaScript Getters and Setters blog post for some good examples. It would be pretty simple to fire off an event from inside a setter.
You may want to consider the MeteorJS framework if wheel reinvention is not really your bag.
what is the advantage/ reason for backbone-js to use the syntax
//using a Model instance called model
model.get('attribute')
and not
model.attribute
Im just starting to use backbone and I always ind myself trying to access the attributes directly
If you look at the source code, the get function just calls to this.attributes[name].
http://backbonejs.org/docs/backbone.html#section-31
The benefit, though, is at least two-fold:
1) a consistent API that reduces the amount of code you are writing
2) the ability to override the get method and provide more complex access control
For example, there are several plugins for backbone that override how models work in order to provide nested model capabilities. it's very easy for them to allow you to write a get method like this:
model.get("submodel.attr")
and have that parse out the attr of the submodel sub-model. Without the get method, it would be more difficult to make this consistent with the API.
The underlying benefit from this is encapsulation, though. Until JavaScript provides true get/set properties that let us write code for getters and setters, we'll be stuck with work-around methods like Backbone's get and set.
Well .. for starters, model.attribute is absolutely NOT correct. model.set() is required in order to get change events to fire. You're very likely to forget this if you get in the habit of using model.attributes[attribute] instead of model.get(attribute)