Custom id value instead of number

[ralphilius]

Is there a way that we can use our own ID value instead of auto-increment value? I'm saving data from an API which also having id from its own system.

[itmammoth]

Can I have a look at the data that you are trying to save on your spreadsheet?

[itmammoth]

Maybe idColumn property can help you.
https://github.com/itmammoth/Tamotsu#prepared-classproperties

[ralphilius]

Hi @itmammoth

Please see below JSON:

{
   "listing_id": 232435,
   "title": "Some title here",
   "state": "active",
   "description": "Some very long description"
}

I've tried to use idColumn but I can't override new listing_id value into that field.

[itmammoth]

Sheet name: example

listing_id	title	state	description
232435	Some title here	active	Some very long description

Run the code below,

  Tamotsu.initialize();
  var Example = Tamotsu.Table.define({
    sheetName: 'example',
    idColumn: 'listing_id',
  });
  var e1 = Example.first();
  Logger.log(e1); //=> {row_=2.0, listing_id=232435.0, description=Some very long description, state=active, title=Some title here}
  var e2 = Example.create({ title: 'Second title', state: 'active', description: 'Second description' });
  Logger.log(e2); //=> {row_=3.0, listing_id=232436.0, description=Second description, state=active, title=Second title, errors={}}

What you can get is

listing_id	title	state	description
232435	Some title here	active	Some very long description
232436	Second title	active	Second description

It looks perfect to me.

[ralphilius]

Actually, the listing_id was incremented. As your example, the create code can possibly be

var e2 = Example.create({listing_id:12345, title: 'Second title', state: 'active', description: 'Second description' });

This is because the table is used to store data from an online database.

I think what I really need is a way to easily use some kind of createOrUpdate function based on a specific unique column. This function is based on below operations:

1. Look up for existing value based on a column name
2. Update the row if there's any record
3. Or create the row if there's none

My thought when I created this issue is that I could utilize Table.find(id) to quickly lookup for duplicate so that I could perform a createOrUpdate decision. Also, some kind of string-based idColumn

[itmammoth]

Thanks @ralphilius
I understand it quite well.
I think there are 2 issues to be solved in this library.

1. Given id value is always ignored on create
2. There is no way to use string-based idColumn

And I will give an easy way to duplicate model instance as an enhancement.

[ralphilius]

Thanks @itmammoth, you have expressed exact issues I have encountered.

[itmammoth]

I'm done with this.

[ralphilius]

Great! Thanks a lot for your hard work