Accessing related object not in the store

[JakeDluhy]

If I have users that have many books, and I make a request for a user object without sideloading the related books, then I might have the following structure in my store:

{
    users: {
        '1': {
            id: '1',
            type: 'users',
            attributes: {},
            relationships: {
                books: {
                    data: {
                        [{
                            id: '1',
                            type: 'books'
                        }, {
                            id: '2',
                            type: 'books'
                        }]
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    },
    books: {}
}

If I run const user = build(state.entities, 'users', '1') then I get the user back. However if I then run user.books I get [null, null]. I would expect that I should get

[{
    id: '1',
    type: 'books'
}, {
    id: '2',
    type: 'books'
}]

I have experienced many use cases where I don't need the full related object, just the id (to provide a link to that object, for instance) and so I won't include the related resources.

I'd be happy to make the changes if you would accept a PR!

[yury-dymov]

Hey @JakeDluhy,

it is supposed to normalize data first before saving in store. Have a look at https://github.com/yury-dymov/json-api-normalizer

[JakeDluhy]

Right, I'm using the json-api-normalizer. I misrepresented what my store looks like. I suppose it's more like

{
    users: {
        '1': {
            id: '1',
            attributes: {},
            relationships: {
                books: {
                    data: {
                        [{
                            id: '1',
                            type: 'books'
                        }, {
                            id: '2',
                            type: 'books'
                        }]
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    },
    books: {}
}

My point is that if I've just made a request like GET /users/1, not GET /users/1?include=books then I won't have any books loaded into the store. Which means that when I do user.books it's going to return [null, null] (because it's trying to find the related resource and is unable to do so). I think that if it can't find the related resource, it should fall back to providing the relationship object, i.e.

console.log(user.books);
// output
[{
    id: '1',
    type: 'books'
}, {
    id: '2',
    type: 'books'
}]

[JakeDluhy]

Here's the diff of my changes: JakeDluhy@aa76ec0, to help you understand what I'm talking about

[yury-dymov]

oh, now I see. Yeah, feel free to submit PR, I am happy to merge it

[JakeDluhy]

Thanks! Btw, I'm loving this library (and json-api-normalizer). It's really cleaning up our implementation of JSON API!

[yury-dymov]

Thank you for your contribution and kind words :)