Amygdala is a RESTful HTTP library for JavaScript powered web applications. Simply configure it once with your API schema, and easily do GET, POST, PUT and DELETE requests with minimal effort and a consistent API.
Examples:
// GETstore; // POSTstore;
How it works
1. INSTALL
NPM/Browserify
npm install amygdala
.
Bower
bower install amygdala
Browser
Download the latest amygdala.js file. Minified/build version coming soon.
Dependencies:
- lodash: ^3.10.1
- q: ^1.0.1
- Wolfy87/EventEmitter: ^4.2.6
2. SETUP
To create a new store, define the few possible settings listed below and your API schema.
var store = 'config': 'apiUrl': 'http://localhost:8000' 'idAttribute': 'url' 'headers': 'X-CSRFToken': 'localStorage': true 'schema': 'users': 'url': '/api/v2/user/' 'teams': 'url': '/api/v2/team/' 'orderBy': 'name' 'oneToMany': 'members': 'members' { return dataresults ? dataresults : data; } 'members': 'foreignKey': 'user': 'users' ;
Configuration options:
- apiUrl - Full path to your base API url (required).
- idAttribute - global primary key attribute (required).
- headers - Any headers that you need to pass on each API request.
- localStorage - enable/disable the persistent localStorage cache.
Schema options:
- url - relative path for each "table" (required)
- orderBy - order by which you want to retrieve local cached data. eg (name, -name (for reverse))
- parse - Accepts a parse method for cases when your API also returns extra meta data.
- idAttribute - overrides key attribute (if different in this schema)
Schema relations:
When you want to include related data under a single request, for example, to minimize HTTP requests, having schema relations allows you to still have a clean separation when interacting with the data locally.
Consider the following schema, that defines discussions that have messages, and messages that have votes:
var store = 'config': 'apiUrl': 'http://localhost:8000' 'idAttribute': 'url' 'schema': 'discussions': 'url': '/api/v2/discussion/' 'oneToMany': 'children': 'messages' 'messages': 'url': '/api/v2/message/' 'oneToMany': 'votes': 'votes' 'foreignKey': 'discussion': 'discussions' 'votes': 'url': '/api/v2/vote/' ;
In this scenario, doing a query on a discussion will retrieve all messages and votes for that discussion:
store;
Since we defined relations on our schema, the message and vote data won't be stored on the discussion "table", but on it's own "table" instead.
OneToMany:
'oneToMany': 'children': 'messages'
OneToMany
relations are the most common, and should be used when you have related data in form of an array. In this case, children
is the attribute name on the response, and messages
is the destination "table" for the array data.
foreignKey:
'foreignKey': 'discussion': 'discussions'
foreignKey
relations are basically for one to one relations. In this case Amygdala will look for an object as value of discussion
and move it over to the discussions
"table" if one is found.
3. USAGE
Querying the remote API server:
The methods below, allow you to make remote calls to your API server.
// GETstore; // POSTstore; // PUTstore; // DELETEstore;
In memory storage API:
On top of this, Amygdala also stores a copy of your data locally, which you can access through a couple different methods:
Find and filtering:
// Get the list of active users from memoryvar users = store; // Get a single user from memoryvar user = store; // Get a single user by id for memoryvar user = store;
If you enable localStorage
, the data is kept persistently. Because of this, once you instantiate Amygdala, your cached data will be loaded, and you can use it right away without having to wait for the remote calls. (We do not recommend using localStorage
for production yet)
Fetching related data:
By defining your schema and creating relations between data, you are then able to query your data objects for the related objects.
In the example schema above, discussions have a oneToMany relation with messages, and messages have a foreignKey relation back to discussions. This is how it you can use them.
// Fetching related messages for a discussion (oneToMay)var messages = store; // Getting the discussion object from a message (foreignKey)var discussion = store;
Note that Amygdala doesn't fetch data automagically for you here, so it's up you to fetch it before running the query.
Events
Amygdala uses Wolfy87/EventEmitter under the hood to trigger some very basic events. Right now it only triggers two different events:
- change
- change:type
To listen to these events, you can use any of Event Emitter's binding methods or the aliases, the most common one being on
:
// Listen to any change in the storestore; // Listen to any change of a specific typestore;