Ember Data 2.5 and 2.6 Beta Released

Ember Data 2.5, a minor version release of Ember Data, is released. This release represents the work of over 31 direct contributors, and over 137 commits.

Ember Data 2.6 beta.1, the branch of Ember Data that will be released as stable in roughly six weeks, is also being released.

Changes in Ember Data 2.5

ds-finder-include

The ds-finder-include feature allows an include query parameter to be specified using store.findRecord() and store.findAll() as described in RFC 99. The include parameter tells JSON-API servers which relationships to sideload in a response, but it can also be used by custom adapters to signal which relationships the backend can sideload to improve performance.

Thanks to @HeroicEric for implementing this feature.

// GET /articles/1?include=comments

var article = this.store.findRecord('article', 1, { include: 'comments' });

// GET /articles?include=comments

var article = this.store.findAll('article', { include: 'comments' });

ds-references

The ds-references feature implements the references API as described in RFC 57. References is a low level API to perform meta-operations on records, has-many relationships and belongs-to relationships:

• get the current local data synchronously without triggering a fetch or producing a promise
• notify the store that a fetch for a given record has begun, and provide a promise for its result
• similarly, notify a record that a fetch for a given relationship has begun, and provide a promise for its result
• retrieve server-provided metadata about a record or relationship

Consider the following post model:

// app/models/post.js
import Model from 'ember-data/model';
import { belongsTo, hasMany } from 'ember-data/relationships';

export default Model.extend({
  comments: hasMany(),
  author: belongsTo()
});

The references API now allows the possibility to interact with the relationships:

var post = store.peekRecord('post', 1);

// check if the author is already loaded, without triggering a request
if (post.belongsTo('author').value() !== null) {
  console.log(post.get("author.name"));
} else {
  // get the id of the author without triggering a request
  var authorId = post.belongsTo("author").id();

  // load the author
  post.belongsTo('author').load();
  console.log(`Loading author with id ${authorId}`);
}

// reload the author
post.belongsTo('author').reload();

// get all ids without triggering a request
var commentIds = post.hasMany('comments').ids();

// check if there are comments, without triggering a request
if (post.hasMany('comments').value() !== null) {
  var meta = post.hasMany('comments').meta();
  console.log(`${commentIds.length} comments out of ${meta.total}`);
} else {
  post.hasMany('comments').load();
}

// reload comments
post.hasMany('comments').reload();

Thanks to @pangratz for implementing this feature.

ds-transform-pass-options

The ds-transform-pass-options feature allows for smarter transforms by passing the options object from DS.attr([type], [options]) into the transform.

Example

// app/models/post.js
export default DS.Model.extend({
  title: DS.attr('string'),
  markdown: DS.attr('markdown', {
    markdown: {
      gfm: false,
      sanitize: true
    }
  })
});

// app/transforms/markdown.js
export default DS.Transform.extend({
  serialize: function (deserialized, attributeMeta) {
    return deserialized.raw;
  },

  deserialize: function (serialized, attributeMeta) {
    var options = attributeMeta.options.markdown || {};

    return marked(serialized, options);
  }
});

Thanks to @pangratz for implementing this feature and @knownasilya for proposing the RFC.

Upcoming Features in Ember Data 2.6.beta-1

• ds-serialize-ids-and-types

Enables a new ids-and-type strategy (in addition to the already existing ids and records) for serializing has many relationships using the DS.EmbeddedRecordsMixin that will include both id and type of each model as an object.

For instance, if a user has many pets, which is a polymorphic relationship, the generated payload would be:

{
  "user": {
    "id": "1"
    "name": "Bertin Osborne",
    "pets": [
      { "id": "1", "type": "Cat" },
      { "id": "2", "type": "Parrot"}
    ]
  }
}

This is particularly useful for polymorphic relationships not backed by STI when including the id of the records is not enough.

For more details on changes in the 2.6 beta, please review the Ember Data 2.6.0-beta.1 CHANGELOG.