Backbone.js design pattern for JSON data - javascript

I've got a question about best practice when designing JSON file which will be displayed by Backbone.js. I know that Backbone is completly agnostic in this topic, but maybe someone will give me good advice in this certain situation.
In the end, I need to have some views which will look like this
On 4th of July, in _____ we calebrate ____ day.
___ means a gap in text, where I'll have an text input or select (depends on type) which correctness will be verified.
So, I need to have a JSON file that describes that piece of text.
I thought about something like this
"body": [
{
"preInputText": "On 4th of July, in ",
"postInputText": "",
"answersID": ["1", "2"]
},
{
"preInputText": "we calebrate ",
"postInputText": " day",
"answersID": ["3"]
}
]
"answers": [
{
"ID": "1",
"content": "USA",
"correct": true
},
{
"ID": "2",
"content": "Canada",
"correct": false
},
{
"ID": "3",
"content": "Independent",
"correct": true
}
]
or, maybe simpleier, but not-so-flat
"body": [
{
"preInputText": "On 4th of July, in ",
"postInputText": "",
"answers": [
{
"ID": "1",
"content": "USA",
"correct": true
},
{
"ID": "2",
"content": "Canada",
"correct": false
},
]
}
]
etc…
So, first approach enforce creating two collections, passing them into one view, and checking values beetween them.
The second, just one collection of models that contains both body and answers, but parsing them at initialization and using nested construction.
I don't know is it a bad pratice (to use nested models), but as i read backbone was designed to think in the more flat way.
Maybe there is some kind of another logic? What do you think?
Thanks!

I'm more with the first approach (the flat one) and I don't agree with you that it enforce creating two collections.
You can always create a single collection and override it's parse function, something like this :
var MyCollection = Backbone.Collection.extend({
...
parse: function(resp) {
this.answers = new Backbone.Collection(resp.answers);
return resp.body;
}
});
...
// myCollection is an instance of MyCollection
myCollection.models // refer to questions
myCollection.answers // refer to answers

"body": [
{
"preInputText": "On 4th of July, in ",
"postInputText": "",
"answers" [ { "ID": "1", "content": "USA", "correct": "true"},
{ "ID": "1", "content": "canada", "correct": "false"}
]
},
{
"preInputText": "we calebrate ",
"postInputText": " day",
"answersID": [{ "ID": "3", "content": "Independent", "correct": "true"},
]
}
]
Using this structure, you need to use one collection. Then you can treat each object in this as a model and you can render these using their separate views in a collection view. So need to use nested models here

Related

jquery/ajax - how to iterate through a json message with duplicate keys?

I receive with my ajax post request a message with values to display. This json response message looks like this:
{
"line": {
"name": "Google item",
"images": {
"element": {
"order": "1",
"link": "https://google.com/1.jpg",
"name": "1.jpg"
},
"element": {
"order": "2",
"link": "https://google.com/2.jpg",
"name": "2.jpg"
},
"element": {
"order": "3",
"link": "https://google.com/3.jpg",
"name": "3.jpg"
},
"element": {
"order": "4",
"link": "https://google.com/4.jpg",
"name": "4.jpg"
},
"element": {
"order": "5",
"link": "https://google.com/5.jpg",
"name": "5.jpg"
}
},
"features": {
"element": {
"name": "1",
"order": "1"
},
"element": {
"name": "2",
"order": "2"
},
"element": {
"name": "3",
"order": "3"
},
"element": {
"name": "4",
"order": "4"
}
},
"purchasing_price": "10",
"selling_price": "20",
"ftp_path": "google/item",
"description": ""
}
}
I'm in development and have not so much experience with json in jquery/ajax.
I tried this:
function parseContent(content){
$("#name").val(content.line.name);
$("#ftp_path").val(content.line.ftp_path);
$("#html_description").val(content.line.description);
$("#feature").remove();
$.each(content.line.features, function(k, v){
$("#features").append('<input type="text" class="form-control mt-3" id="feature" value="' + v.name + '" required>');
alert(v.name );
});
}
My problem is, the variable content contains just the last image und feature element. But in chrome/network I could see, the complete message has been received.
So I found out there is a parsing issue: Parsed JSON contains only the last element.
But how can I fix this in my case, to iterate through all elements?
The JSON specification says:
The names within an object SHOULD be unique.
The names in those objects are not.
SHOULD means:
that there
may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore a
particular item, but the full implications must be understood and
carefully weighed before choosing a different course.
The implications here are that every JSON parser (that I'm aware of at least) will ignore all but one of the values with duplicate names in an object.
If you really need to deal with that data then you are going to have to either track down a parser which can handle it (I'm not aware of any) or write a custom JSON parser which can (you'll also need to decide what data structure you want to generate from it because JS can't have duplicate property names in objects either). There are a number of JSON parsers on npm you might want to examine the source code of as a starting point.
A better solution would be to change whatever is generating the source data to produce a sensible format that doesn't violate a SHOULD requirement. Replacing the duplicate property names with an array for example.

MongoDB aggregate function is not returning the value of collection joined using JavaScript

I needed assistance in order to work out why the aggregate function is not responding the way I'd expect it to respond. This is a RESTful API service I've designed in which I am trying to connect collections with each other. Please note the following:
Collection: Season
{
"_id": {
"$oid": "5c0fc60bfb6fc04dd6ea4e9a"
},
"Season": "1",
"TotalEpisode": "15",
"Name": null,
"Description": "First season with no name for this drama",
"PlayID": "5c0fc4aafb6fc04dd6ea4d81"
}
Collection: Play
{
"_id": {
"$oid": "5c0fc4aafb6fc04dd6ea4d81"
},
"Name": "It was the first time",
"Description": "One of the best action heros in the entertainment industry until this day",
"ReleaseDate": "24/12/2010",
"EndingDate": "12/08/2012",
"Category": "Drama"
}
My implemented code in JavaScript
function getTestLookUp(db, collectionName, response, secondCollectionName){
console.log('First collection name: ' + collectionName + '\n' + 'Second collection name: ' + secondCollectionName);
db.collection(collectionName).aggregate([
{
$lookup:
{
from: secondCollectionName,
localField: 'PlayID',
foreignField: '_id',
as: 'requestedDetails'
}
}
]).toArray((err, res) => {
if(err){
console.log(err);
} else {
console.log(res);
response.status(200).json({
'Items': res
});
}
});
}
The response
{
"Items": [
{
"_id": "5c0fc60bfb6fc04dd6ea4e9a",
"Season": "1",
"TotalEpisode": "15",
"Name": null,
"Description": "First season with no name for this drama",
"PlayID": "5c0fc4aafb6fc04dd6ea4d81",
"requestedDetails": []
}
]
}
The things I've checked so far: the collection names are accurate, the ID is also accurate as I can search it up on the MLabs search feature. I don't understand as to why this is returning a empty 'requestedDetails' as I hoped it would return the item from the Play collection.
In addition to this, I would also appreciate if someone can point out how I can join multiple collections instead of 2.
I welcome any questions regarding this problem.
While still researching for this issue, I accidentally came across a another problem in which someone wrote a comment stating that "you might be comparing a String with ObjectID". This was the cause for this error as I obtain a String variable in return from the database and I am comparing the String variable with the _id which is expecting to see a ObjectID variable to complete the query. Therefore, meaning that my query/lookup is never matching these two variables.
The only way tackle this issue is to do a conversion (string to ObjectID) and then compare the values. However, since I'm using the version of ^3.1.10 of MongoDB, this functionality is not possible. Will need to update the version to 4.0 to be able to implement this functionality.
In order to rectify this issue, I managed to surround the foreign ID within $iod tags.
Before
{
"_id": {
"$oid": "5c0fc60bfb6fc04dd6ea4e9a"
},
"Season": "1",
"TotalEpisode": "15",
"Name": null,
"Description": "First season with no name for this drama",
"PlayID": "5c0fc4aafb6fc04dd6ea4d81"
}
After
{
"_id": {
"$oid": "5c0fc60bfb6fc04dd6ea4e9a"
},
"Season": "1",
"TotalEpisode": "15",
"Name": null,
"Description": "First season with no name for this drama",
"PlayID": {
"$oid": "5c0fc4aafb6fc04dd6ea4d81"
}
}
Response
{
"Items": [
{
"_id": "5c0fc60bfb6fc04dd6ea4e9a",
"Season": "1",
"TotalEpisode": "15",
"Name": null,
"Description": "First season with no name for this drama",
"PlayID": "5c0fc4aafb6fc04dd6ea4d81",
"Details": [
{
"_id": "5c0fc4aafb6fc04dd6ea4d81",
"Name": "It was the first time",
"Description": "One of the best action heros in the entertainment industry until this day",
"ReleaseDate": "24/12/2010",
"EndingDate": "12/08/2012",
"Category": "Drama"
}
]
}
]
}

Redux state tree structure: "same type of data with different format / amounts of detail"

I've done Dan Abramov's intro series on EggHead, and am working on a real world app. The domain is complex, so I'll run with a classic "blogs" example.
Let's say, we have an "index / list" page, where all we need to show are the blog post's title and blurb. So we have an API endpoint that returns that, and we store it in our state tree under blogs.byId.
Then, when you click through on a blog post, we actually need a bunch more info - e.g. the full blog post, and also tags and categories. Let's call this "blogs with metadata".
Stretching the example, there might be another completely separate page where I want to display a list of blog posts with the most recent 3 comments. Let's call this "blogs with comments".
My question is, how should my state tree treat these separate examples where I'm storing the same "thing" but in different "formats"? My initial hunch would be to treat them as completely separate data types, so my state tree would have eg: blogs.byId, blogsWithMetadata.byId and blogsWithComments.byId.
And then, even if every single blog post is cached in the blogs.byId section, the minute we need to view a blog post, the app completely ignores that warm blogs.byId cache, and looks only at blogsWithMetadata.byId - so we'd essentially be building up 3 separate caches of blog data, each with different amounts of info, and treating it as though they are as unrelated to each other as "blogs" and a completely unrelated table like "widgets" would be.
Is this correct? Or is there a better way?
The app currently rams them all under the same node, without distinction based on "format" and it's causing a world of pain.
There are probably many ways you could choose to do this. One of it is to use normalizr to structure your data.
Your blog post could have a data structure returned by the API like this:
{
"id": "123",
"author": {
"id": "1",
"name": "Paul"
},
"title": "My awesome blog post",
"comments": [{
"id": "324",
"commenter": {
"id": "2",
"name": "Nicole"
}
}],
"tags": [{
"id": "1",
"value": "awesome"
}, {
"id": "2",
"value": "journal"
}],
"categories": [{
"id": "1",
"value": "personal"
}, {
"id": "2",
"value": "life"
}]
}
which after normalizing, will look something like this:
{
entities: {
"post": {
"123": {
id: "123",
author: "1",
title: "My awesome blog post",
comments: ["324"],
tags: ["1", "2"],
categories: ["1", "2"],
}
},
"users": {
"1": { "id": "1", "name": "Paul" },
"2": { "id": "2", "name": "Nicole" }
},
"comments": {
"324": { id: "324", "commenter": "2" }
}
"tags": {
"1": { id: "1", "value": "awesome" },
"2": { id: "2", "value": "journal" },
}
"categories": {
"1": { id: "1", "value": "personal" },
"2": { id: "2", "value": "life" },
}
}
}
Subsequently, you could have a state for each page if you needed to:
{
entities: {...},
ui: {
blogs: {
posts: [1, 2],
hasComments: false,
// Displaying the blogs with or without comments
// could simply just be a boolean flag in state.
},
}
}
using reselect, you then create the selectors to pass the posts you want as props to the page Components.

How to loop through array of objects in Node/Express and check if a match exists in MongoDB database?

I am building a web app with the MEAN stack and Yelp API that returns an array of objects, where each object is a local business. I work with this data in the front-end, but before I send a response I want to check if a particular object exists in the MongoDB database and I am struggling with how to do that.
Here is an object that is returned from the API:
[
{
"name": "Arendsnest",
"url": "https://www.yelp.com/biz/arendsnest-amsterdam-2?adjust_creative=ycRBsh7KEkNFq3wJvKoL6Q&utm_campaign=yelp_api&utm_medium=api_v2_search&utm_source=ycRBsh7KEkNFq3wJvKoL6Q",
"snippet_text": "The reigning Lord of Amsterdam beer bars. Popular and seats go fast...come early. Ask for the massive all-Dutch beer list and prepare to have your...",
"image_url": "https://s3-media2.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/FurcfTuqaYBv_q34bGTK5g/ms.jpg"
},
{
"name": "Bar Oldenhof",
"url": "https://www.yelp.com/biz/bar-oldenhof-amsterdam?adjust_creative=ycRBsh7KEkNFq3wJvKoL6Q&utm_campaign=yelp_api&utm_medium=api_v2_search&utm_source=ycRBsh7KEkNFq3wJvKoL6Q",
"snippet_text": "So I'm not much of a drinker. My taste is highly selective and I usually prefer not to drink alcohol altogether. But my husband is the opposite so on a...",
"image_url": "https://s3-media4.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/1k57z7ziIW8MyAWHlXWGdg/ms.jpg"
},
{
"name": "Beer Temple",
"url": "https://www.yelp.com/biz/beer-temple-amsterdam?adjust_creative=ycRBsh7KEkNFq3wJvKoL6Q&utm_campaign=yelp_api&utm_medium=api_v2_search&utm_source=ycRBsh7KEkNFq3wJvKoL6Q",
"snippet_text": "This is a great place to stop in and have some American craft beer. With 30+ taps and a seemingly never ending list of bottle selections, you have many...",
"image_url": "https://s3-media1.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/yxUiYre1Y6ULqMhQ30NPOA/ms.jpg"
},
{
"name": "Tales & Spirits",
"url": "https://www.yelp.com/biz/tales-en-spirits-amsterdam?adjust_creative=ycRBsh7KEkNFq3wJvKoL6Q&utm_campaign=yelp_api&utm_medium=api_v2_search&utm_source=ycRBsh7KEkNFq3wJvKoL6Q",
"snippet_text": "This is exactly what every high-end cocktail bar should strive to have and be.\n\nFriendly staff: From the bartenders to the manager to the waitress. Everyone...",
"image_url": "https://s3-media4.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/IElXytpbY0bpp7ZdjFdGvA/ms.jpg"
}
]
This exists in the MongoDB database:
{
"_id": {
"$oid": "57da26d8dcba0f51172f47b1"
},
"name": "Arendsnest",
"url": "https://www.yelp.com/biz/arendsnest-amsterdam-2?adjust_creative=ycRBsh7KEkNFq3wJvKoL6Q&utm_campaign=yelp_api&utm_medium=api_v2_search&utm_source=ycRBsh7KEkNFq3wJvKoL6Q",
"snippet_text": "The reigning Lord of Amsterdam beer bars. Popular and seats go fast...come early. Ask for the massive all-Dutch beer list and prepare to have your...",
"image_url": "https://s3-media2.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/FurcfTuqaYBv_q34bGTK5g/ms.jpg"
}
How can I write a query in Node to loop through my array using name property and do a check on every object if it exists in the database and return the data?
No need to iterate the array, use the $or operator with a mapped array that has the fields you want to query.
Take the following example where you want to search for a match of two properties:
var yelp = [
{
"name": "Arendsnest",
"url": "url1",
"snippet_text": "foo",
"image_url": "bar.jpg"
},
{
"name": "Bar Oldenhof",
"url": "abc",
"snippet_text": "efg",
"image_url": "ms.jpg"
},
{
"name": "Beer Temple",
"url": "https://www.yelp.com/",
"snippet_text": "test",
"image_url": "ms.jpg"
},
{
"name": "Tales & Spirits",
"url": "https://www.yelp.com/",
"snippet_text": "This is exactly...",
"image_url": "ms.jpg"
}
],
query = yelp.map(function(item){ return { name: item.name, url: item.url }; });
db.collection.find({ "$or": query });
This will create an array that you can use as the $or expression in your find() method, equivalent to :
db.collection.find({
"$or": [
{
"name": "Arendsnest",
"url": "url1"
},
{
"name": "Bar Oldenhof",
"url": "abc"
},
{
"name": "Beer Temple",
"url": "https://www.yelp.com/"
},
{
"name": "Tales & Spirits",
"url": "https://www.yelp.com/"
}
]
})
For querying on single properties, say for instance you want to query on just the name field, better use the $in operator which is better optimised for such:
query = yelp.map(function(item){ return item.name; });
db.collection.find({ "name": { "$in": query } });

Ember JS + Ember Data: Sideloading doesn't work with string ids

I'm using ember rc3 and ember-data 12 (sha e324f0e) (basically the files recommended in the guides). I have 2 models set up as follows:
App.User = DS.Model.extend({
username: DS.attr('string'),
playerType: DS.attr('string'),
cars: DS.hasMany('App.Car')
})
App.Car = DS.Model.extend({
name: DS.attr('string'),
thumb: DS.attr('string'),
user: DS.belongsTo('App.User')
})
The json returned is
{
"cars": [
{
"id": "50ace47234fa7557403e7f02",
"name": "Dodge Charger SRT8",
"thumb": "/static/images/carthumbs/18331.png",
"user_id": "502a754b34fa75280c000a7e"
},
{
"id": "508668cc34fa753b78784ca2",
"name": "BMW M3 Coup\u00e9",
"thumb": "/static/images/carthumbs/23250.png",
"user_id": "502a754b34fa75280c000a7e"
},
{
"id": "50c7545334fa750ab8cb3ac2",
"name": "BMW Z4 M Coup\u00e9",
"thumb": "/static/images/carthumbs/7618.png",
"user_id": "502a754b34fa75280c000a7e"
},
{
"id": "50adf64c34fa750bb036121e",
"name": "2013 Ford Shelby GT500\u2122",
"thumb": "/static/images/carthumbs/24824.png",
"user_id": "502a754b34fa75280c000a7e"
}
],
"user": {
"id": "502a754b34fa75280c000a7e",
"car_ids": [
"50ace47234fa7557403e7f02",
"508668cc34fa753b78784ca2",
"50c7545334fa750ab8cb3ac2",
"50adf64c34fa750bb036121e"
],
"player_type": "Standard Player",
"username": "WillMckenzie"
}
}
Everything seems to load fine if I call App.User.find("502a754b34fa75280c000a7e"), but when I try and access the cars property on the user it triggers a second http request to the cars api route. It was my understanding that this shouldn't be necessary, and if I change the ids to basic ints, it doesn't. As I'm using Mongo as my DB my ids have to be in this string format.
Any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong?
Cheers
Will
Here's the answer so people don't have to dig through the comments:
"I had one car id listed that wasn't in the list of cars returned. They're grabbed slightly differently and I obviously had a bad record in there. This meant it always thought it needed to reload that record so would keep requesting. Obviously when I was faking the integer ids it was masking this." - OiNutter

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