Have conventional way of preloading data into the store

[tomdale]

Often, developers want to include a batch of data with the initial HTML request for the application, so that an additional "data-only" XHR isn't required to boot the app.

We should provide a convention for doing this.

[nragaz]

Any progress on this one? My old (hackish) way of bootstrapping data no longer works with b1, so before I hack together a new way a conventional solution would be nice... push is useful but normalizing the data before pushing it still requires some work.

[sly7-7]

@nragaz there is currently an other issue about normalizing during push: #1199 (comment)

[alexspeller]

@tomdale if @bradleypriest's code in #1199 (below) was made into a tested PR (in javascript no less!) would you accept?

App.Store = DS.Store.extend  
  pushData: (prop, data) ->
    type       = @modelFor(prop)
    serializer = @serializerFor(type)
    if Ember.typeOf(data) is "array"
      data = data.map (object) -> serializer.normalize(type, prop, object)
      @pushMany(type, data)
    else
      data = serializer.normalize(type, prop, data)
      @push(type, data)

[alexspeller]

Also, I don't know if this is intentional or not, but pushing into the store does not push the object into hasMany arrays. Is this expected behaviour? Should adding a new object to the store also push into a hasMany array? Anyone have any info on this?

[zeevallin]

@alexspeller - This works fine for me running on latest ember-data. Check the TRANSITION.md about changes made to relations and response serialisation.

[alexspeller]

@Zeeraw are you talking about hasMany array being a live array? I've read the transition docs very carefully and it is still not working.

[zeevallin]

@alexspeller I was referring to extractSingle

el  = 'body'
key = 'session'

payload = JSON.parse($(el).attr(key))
$(el).attr(key,null)

record_id = payload[key].id

store   = container.lookup('store:main')
factory = store.modelFor(key)
adapter = store.adapterForType(key)

store.push(key, adapter.get('serializer').extractSingle(store, factory, payload))

[sandstrom]

There is now a method to push data into the store, which is awesome 4bf1b7a.
A related issue is avoiding xhr's when the store already has all the records [preloaded].

Example
We have a static set of countries packaged in our monolith.js, loaded using this method (to avoid an extra xhr). However, store.find('countries') still fire off an xhr. A way of telling the store that it already has up-to-date records would be useful.

In our case this static data is never persisted, but there are certainly use cases where data is preloaded but still need to be modified.

Possible solutions

1. Using some 'expiresAt' value for the records (which could be given a very high value for practical non-expiry).
2. By simply marking records/models as 'local' in some sense. This could be either on the query level (options to find) or on the adapter level (all the time). Either way, there would be no attempt to fetch from the adapter, the store would only work with what it already had.
3. Using a custom adapter for the preloaded models, where find returns/resolves instantly. That works fine for models that need not be persisted (read-only), but is probably less useful for data that is preloaded, but where subsequent finds/reloads from the server may still be needed.

[alexspeller]

@sandstrom doesn't store have .all() which has the behaviour you want, I.e. return all records currently in the store without making a request and updating the array returned if more records arrive? Or is that gone now?

[sandstrom]

@alexspeller It's still around, thanks!!

[alexspeller]

@tomdale see #1309

[wycats]

I'm closing this due to #1309. It might be nice to have <script type="text/x-bootstrap-payload"> that "just works". Anyone want to grab it?