Loading data asynchronously in ember-data - asynchronous

I'm writing an application based on ember-data, it loads up all of its data asynchronously. However, the didLoad function does not get called until find is used. For example:
App = Ember.Application.create();
App.Store = DS.Store.create({revision: 3});
App.Thing = DS.Model.extend({
didLoad: function(){
alert("I loaded " + this.get('id'));
}
});
App.Store.load(App.Thing,{id: "foo"});
...will not trigger the alert, and findAll will not return the model. However, when I run:
App.Store.find(App.Thing,"foo");
The didLoad function will trigger, and it can be found with App.Store.findAll(App.Thing).
What's going on?

The ember-data source code explains it well:
// A record enters this state when the store askes
// the adapter for its data. It remains in this state
// until the adapter provides the requested data.
//
// Usually, this process is asynchronous, using an
// XHR to retrieve the data.
loading: DS.State.create({
// TRANSITIONS
exit: function(manager) {
var record = get(manager, 'record');
record.fire('didLoad');
},
// EVENTS
didChangeData: function(manager, data) {
didChangeData(manager);
manager.send('loadedData');
},
loadedData: function(manager) {
manager.goToState('loaded');
}
}),
this means that 'didLoad' will only be triggered when the record was loaded via the adapter.
The 'find' method asks the adapter for the data - this looks it up in the pool of currently available data hashes and in your case finds it, because you already provided it. In other cases however the data maybe does not exist locally in the browser but remain on the server, which would trigger an ajax request in the adapter to fetch it.
So 'didLoad' currently only works in combination with an adapter (e.g: find)
But I totally agree with you that this should be changed since triggering 'didLoad' on models that are loaded vai Store.load seems pretty obvious ;-)

Related

Meteor GroundDB granularity for offline/online syncing

Let's say that two users do changes to the same document while offline, but in different sections of the document. If user 2 goes back online after user 1, will the changes made by user 1 be lost?
In my database, each row contains a JS object, and one property of this object is an array. This array is bound to a series of check-boxes on the interface. What I would like is that if two users do changes to those check-boxes, the latest change is kept for each check-box individually, based on the time the when the change was made, not the time when the syncing occurred. Is GroundDB the appropriate tool to achieve this? Is there any mean to add an event handler in which I can add some logic that would be triggered when syncing occurs, and that would take care of the merging ?
The short answer is "yes" none of the ground db versions have conflict resolution since the logic is custom depending on the behaviour of conflict resolution eg. if you want to automate or involve the user.
The old Ground DB simply relied on Meteor's conflict resolution (latest data to the server wins) I'm guessing you can see some issues with that depending on the order of when which client comes online.
Ground db II doesn't have method resume it's more or less just a way to cache data offline. It's observing on an observable source.
I guess you could create a middleware observer for GDB II - one that checks the local data before doing the update and update the client or/and call the server to update the server data. This way you would have a way to handle conflicts.
I think to remember writing some code that supported "deletedAt"/"updatedAt" for some types of conflict handling, but again a conflict handler should be custom for the most part. (opening the door for reusable conflict handlers might be useful)
Especially knowing when data is removed can be tricky if you don't "soft" delete via something like using a "deletedAt" entity.
The "rc" branch is currently grounddb-caching-2016 version "2.0.0-rc.4",
I was thinking about something like:
(mind it's not tested, written directly in SO)
// Create the grounded collection
foo = new Ground.Collection('test');
// Make it observe a source (it's aware of createdAt/updatedAt and
// removedAt entities)
foo.observeSource(bar.find());
bar.find() returns a cursor with a function observe our middleware should do the same. Let's create a createMiddleWare helper for it:
function createMiddleWare(source, middleware) {
const cursor = (typeof (source||{}).observe === 'function') ? source : source.find();
return {
observe: function(observerHandle) {
const sourceObserverHandle = cursor.observe({
added: doc => {
middleware.added.call(observerHandle, doc);
},
updated: (doc, oldDoc) => {
middleware.updated.call(observerHandle, doc, oldDoc);
},
removed: doc => {
middleware.removed.call(observerHandle, doc);
},
});
// Return stop handle
return sourceObserverHandle;
}
};
}
Usage:
foo = new Ground.Collection('test');
foo.observeSource(createMiddleware(bar.find(), {
added: function(doc) {
// just pass it through
this.added(doc);
},
updated: function(doc, oldDoc) {
const fooDoc = foo.findOne(doc._id);
// Example of a simple conflict handler:
if (fooDoc && doc.updatedAt < fooDoc.updatedAt) {
// Seems like the foo doc is newer? lets update the server...
// (we'll just use the regular bar, since thats the meteor
// collection and foo is the grounded data
bar.update(doc._id, fooDoc);
} else {
// pass through
this.updated(doc, oldDoc);
}
},
removed: function(doc) {
// again just pass through for now
this.removed(doc);
}
}));

Refreshing page with meteor iron router

Here is the problem :
I am currently programming a chatapp based on what i found on github (https://github.com/sasikanth513/chatDemo)
I am refactoring it with iron-router.
When I go to the page (clicking on the link) I get an existing chatroom (that's what I want)
When I refresh the page (F5) I get a new created chatroom ! (what i want is getting the existing chatroom ...)
Here is the code in ironrouter :
Router.route('/chatroom', {
name: 'chatroom',
data: function() {
var currentId = Session.get('currentId'); //id of the other person
var res=ChatRooms.findOne({chatIds:{$all:[currentId,Meteor.userId()]}});
console.log(res);
if(res){
Session.set("roomid",res._id);
}
else{
var newRoom= ChatRooms.insert({chatIds:[currentId, Meteor.userId()],messages:[]});
Session.set('roomid',newRoom);
}
}
});
You can find my github repo with the whole project : https://github.com/balibou/textr
Thanx a lot !
Your route data depends on Session variables which will be erased after a refresh. You have a few options but the easiest would be to put the room id directly into the route: '/chatroom/:_id'. Then you can use this.params._id to fetch the appropriate ChatRooms document. Note that you could still keep '/chatroom' for cases where the room doesn't exist, however you'd need to redirect to '/chatroom/:_id' after the insert.
In meteor, the Session object is empty when the client starts, and loading/refreshing the page via HTTP "restarts" the client. To deal with this issue, you could persist the user's correspondent id in a Meteor.user attribute, so that you could easily do:
Router.route('/chatroom', {
name: 'chatroom',
data: function() {
var currentId = Meteor.user().profile.correspondentId;
var res=ChatRooms.findOne({chatIds:{$all:[currentId,Meteor.userId()]}});
console.log(res);
if(res){
Session.set("roomid",res._id);
}
else{
var newRoom= ChatRooms.insert({chatIds:[currentId, Meteor.userId()],messages:[]});
Session.set('roomid',newRoom);
}
}
});
This would work, with the proper permissions, but I would recommend not allowing the direct update of that value on the client (I don't know if you want users to be able to override their correspondentId). So if you want to secure this process, replace all that code with a server method call, where your updates are safer.
Another (and more common case) solution was given by David Weldon, if you don't mind having ids in your URL (and therefore not a single url)

Meteor: what is the right way to add custom settings object to users collection?

There are multiple examples on publish/subscribe but not clear on what is the best practice for storing custom data in the in-built "users" collection in Meteor (especially in the new possibility of template specific collections).
For example, I need to store user browse history - something that is accessible through Meteor.user().settings.history.lastvisited[]
The challenge is:
Is any special publish / subscribe required for the above? (the
reason being, I am assuming the users collection is already
published and available on client side - so do we need another?)
How to take care of edge cases where user is new and hence settings.history object may not be defined? Can we have a special publish that automatically takes care of creating an empty object if the settings is undefined? How to do it?
I did this :
// server side
Meteor.publish('userSettings', function (maxRows) {
if (this.userId) {
return Meteor.users.find({ _id: this.userId }, { fields: {'settings':1}});
}
this.ready();
});
//client side
Meteor.subscribe('userSettings');
But I do not see anyway how I can access the published "userSettings" object on the client side - what is missing ??
You can create a field and set it to false/'', on each user you create using the accountsOnCreateUser method.
Accounts.onCreateUser(function(options, user) {
//this function gets called each time a user has been created on the Meteor.user collection
if (options.profile)
user.settings = ''; //this is just and example.
return user;
})
Now the publish looks ok, but in order to get it work im always use a Tracker.autorun function.
Tracker.autorun(function(){
Meteor.subscribe('userSettings');
})
Why the autorun? well if you don't call the auto run here, the subscription get only called 1 time when the apps loads, and not when the user documents.
Take care of yours deny/allow permissions, check this meteor:common mistakes post on the Profile editing section
Also the subscribe function have a callback function. Meteor.subscribe(name, [arg1, arg2...], [callbacks]), so you can do something like this.
var myUserSubscription = Meteor.subscribe('userSettings',function(){
console.log("ok im here on the client side")
console.log("this user subscription is ready " + myUserSubscription.ready())
})
console.log("outside the subscription why not? " + myUserSubscription.ready();
About ready();
True if the server has marked the subscription as ready. A reactive
data source.

Can't put data from a Meteor collection into an array

I'm learning Meteor and I was trying to pass the result of a Collection.find() into and array (using a variable) and the simpler code I have is (in a file that is in the root):
CalEvents = new Mongo.Collection('calevents'); //creating a collection
/*------------------------- Populating the database with dummy data-------*/
if (Meteor.isServer) {
Meteor.startup(function () {
if (CalEvents.find().count() === 0) {
CalEvents.insert({
title: "Initial room",
start: '2010-02-02'
});
}
});
}
/*--------------- Creating an array from the collection-----------------*/
events = [];
calEvents = CalEvents.find({});
calEvents.forEach(function(evt){
events.push({
title: evt.title,
start: evt.start,
})
});
The page has nothing to show but using the console I can see (CalEvents.find().fetch()) that I have data in my database but the "events" variable is empty...
I can't understand why because I tried several other things such as changing file names and moving code to guarantee the proper order.
And I already tried to use CalEvents.find().fetch() to create an array an put the result into a variable but I'm not able to do it...
Does anyone know what's so simple that I'm missing?...
Do you use autosubscribe?
You probably need to make sure the sbscription is ready. See Meteor: How can I tell when the database is ready? and Displaying loader while meteor collection loads.
The reason you do see CalEvents.find().fetch() returning items in the console is that by the time you make that call, the subscription is ready. But in your events = []; ... code (which I assume is in a file under the client directory, you might have assumed that the subscription data has arrived when in fact it has not.
A useful debugging tool is Chrome's device mode ("phone" icon near the search icon in DevTools), which lets you simulate slow networks (e.g. GPRS, with 500ms delay for every request).

Meteor How to block a method call before the first one is finished?

I have the following scenario:
Client side has a button clicking it will execute Meteor.call method on the server-side which will call API and fetch products, During this time I wan't to disable this button + block this method from executing again basically nothing stops you from clicking the button 100x times and server will keep on executing same method again and again.
Few ideas I had in my mind: Use sessions to disable button (Problem: can still using the console Meteor.call and abuse it)
I also looked at Meteor.apply in the docs with wait:true didn't seems to stop from method execution. I honestly not sure how this kind of thing is handled with no hacks.
Client-side:
'click .button-products': function(e){
Meteor.call('getActiveProducts', function(error, results){
if (error)
return Alerts.add(error.reason, 'danger', {autoHide: 5000});
if (results.success)
return Alerts.add('Finished Importing Products Successfully', 'success', {autoHide: 5000});
})
}
Server-side
Meteor.methods({
getActiveProducts: function(){
var user = Meteor.user();
var api = api.forUser(user);
importProducts = function(items){
nextPage = items.pagination.next_page;
items.results.forEach(function(product){
var sameproduct = apiProducts.findOne({listing_id: product.listing_id});
if (sameproduct) {
return;
}
var productExtend = _.extend(product, {userId: Meteor.userId()});
apiProducts.insert(productExtend);
});
};
var products = api.ProductsActive('GET', {includes: 'Images', limit: 1});
importProducts(products);
while (nextPage !== null) {
products = api.ProductsActive('GET', {includes: 'Images', page: nextPage, limit: 1});
importProducts(products);
}
return {success: true};
}
});
From the Meteor docs:
On the server, methods from a given client run one at a time. The N+1th invocation from a client won't start until the Nth invocation returns. However, you can change this by calling this.unblock. This will allow the N+1th invocation to start running in a new fiber.
What this means is that subsequent calls to the method won't actually know that they were made while the first call was still running, because the first call will have already finished running. But you could do something like this:
Meteor.methods({
getActiveProducts: function() {
var currentUser = Meteor.users.findOne(this.userId);
if (currentUser && !currentUser.gettingProducts) {
Meteor.users.update(this.userId, {$set: {gettingProducts: true}});
// let the other calls run, but now they won't get past the if block
this.unblock();
// do your actual method stuff here
Meteor.users.update(this.userId, {$set: {gettingProducts: false}});
}
}
});
Now subsequent calls may run while the first is still running, but they won't run anything inside the if block. Theoretically, if the user sends enough calls, the first call could finish before all of the others have started. But this should at least significantly limit the number of etsy calls that can be initiated by a user. You could adapt this technique to be more robust, such as storing the last time a successful call was initiated and making sure X seconds have passed, or storing the number of times the method has been called in the last hour and limiting that number, etc.
A package I wrote a while back might come in handy for you. Essentially it exposes the Session api on the server side (hence the name), meaning you can do something like ServerSession.set('doingSomethingImportant', true) within the call, and then check this session's value in subsequent calls. The session can only be set on the server, and expires upon connection close (so they could spam calls, but only as fast as they can refresh the page).
In the event of error, you can just reset the session. There shouldn't be any issues related to unexpected errors either because the session will just expire upon connection close. Let me know what you think :)

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