resourceful

A storage agnostic resource-oriented ODM for building prototypical models with validation and sanitization.

Example

  var resourceful = require('resourceful');
  
  var Creature = resourceful.define('creature', function () {
    //
    // Specify a storage engine
    //
    this.use('couchdb');
    
    //
    // Specify some properties with validation
    //
    this.property('diet'); // Defaults to String
    this.property('vertebrate', Boolean);
    this.property('belly', Array);
  });
  
  //
  // Now that the `Creature` prototype is defined
  // we can add custom logic to be available on all instances
  //
  Creature.prototype.feed = function (food) {
    this.belly.push(food);
  };

Motivation

How often have you found yourself writing Model code in your application? Pretty often? Good! Unlike other "Object-Document Mappers" resourceful tries to only focus on two things:

1. A simple API for defining custom Model prototypes with validation. No special sugar is required to instantiate prototypes defined by resourceful.
2. Define an extensibility model for databases to provide CRUD functionality to Models along with custom query, filtering or updating specific to that specific implementation (Mongo, CouchDB, Redis, etc).

API Documentation

Defining resources

Here's the simplest of resources:

  var Creature = resourceful.define('creature');

The returned Creature object is a resource constructor, in other words, a function. Now let's add some properties to this constructor:

  Creature.property('diet'); // Defaults to String
  Creature.property('vertebrate', Boolean);
  Creature.property('belly', Array);

And add a method to the prototype:

  Creature.prototype.feed = function (food) {
    this.belly.push(food);
  };

Now lets instantiate a Creature, and feed it:

  var wolf = new(Creature)({
    diet:      'carnivor',
    vertebrate: true
  });
  
  wolf.feed('squirrel');
  console.dir(wolf.belly);

You can also define resources this way:

  var Creature = resourceful.define('creature', function () {
    this.property('diet');
    this.property('vertebrate', Boolean);
    this.property('belly', Array);

    this.prototype.feed = function (food) {
      this.belly.push(food);
    };
  });

Defining properties with Resource.property

Lets define a legs property, which is the number of legs the creature has:

  Creature.property('legs', Number);

Note that this form is equivalent:

  Creature.property('legs', 'number');

If we wanted to constrain the possible values the property could take, we could pass in an object as the last parameter:

  Creature.property('legs', Number, {
    required: true,

    minimum: 0,
    maximum: 8,

    assert: function (val) {
      return val % 2 === 0;
    }
  });

Now resourceful won't let Creature instances be saved unless the legs property has a value between 0 and 8, and is even,

This style is also valid for defining properties:

  Creature.property('legs', Number)
          .required()
          .minimum(0)
          .maximum(8)
          .assert(function (val) { return val % 2 === 0 });

If you want to access and modify an already defined property, you can do it this way:

    Creature.properties['legs'].maximum(6);

Saving and fetching resources

  Wolf.create({ name: 'Wolverine', age: 68 }, function (err, wolf) {
    if (err) { throw new(Error)(err) }

    console.log(wolf); // { _id: 42, resource: 'wolf', name: 'Wolverine', age: 68 }

    wolf.age++;
    wolf.save(function (err) {
      if (!err) {
        console.log('happy birthday ' + wolf.name + '!');
      }
    });
  });

  Wolf.get(42, function (err, wolf) {
    if (err) { throw new(Error)(err) }

    wolf.update({ fur: 'curly' }, function (e, wolf) {
      console.log(wolf.fur); // "curly"
    });
  });

Resource constructor methods

These methods are available on all user-defined resource constructors, as well as on the default resourceful.Resource constructor. In other "classy" languages these can be thought of as Class methods.

• Resource.get(id, [callback]): Fetch a resource by id.
• Resource.update(id, properties, [callback]): Update a resource with properties.
• Resource.destroy(id, [callback]): Destroy a resource by id.
• Resource.all([callback]): Fetches all resources of this type.
• Resource.save(inst, [callback]): Saves the specified resource instance inst by overwriting all properties.
• Resource.create(properties, [callback]): Creates a new instance of the Resource with the specified properties

Resource prototype methods

These are the prototype methods, available on resource instances created with the new operator. In other "classy" languages these can be thought of as Instance methods

• Resource.prototype.save([callback])
• Resource.prototype.update(properties, [callback])
• Resource.prototype.destroy([callback])
• Resource.prototype.reload([callback])

Installation

Installing npm (node package manager)

  $ curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh

Installing resourceful

  $ [sudo] npm install resourceful

Tests

All tests are written with vows and should be run with npm:

  $ npm test

Author: Alexis Sellier, Charlie Robbins

Contributors: Fedor Indutny, Bradley Meck

License: Apache 2.0