The storeAssociated Utility

Learn how to store associated data in its proper stores.

Note

The storeAssociated API is deprecated. As of Feathers-Pinia v4.2 it has been replaced with a suite of smaller, more-flexible, single-purpose utilities. See Data Modeling for the new way to store associated data.

• storeAssociated Deprecated
• Example

Every Feathers-Pinia Client includes a storeAssociated method, which receives a data object and a config object which tells the utility the service in which to store the associated data.

storeAssociated Deprecated

storeAssociated(data, config)

• data {Object} any record
• config {Object} an object with keys that represent a key from data and where the values are service paths.

Note that storeAssociated should generally be used first in setupInstance.

Example

See storeAssociated as configured in the posts service of this example:

export const api = createPiniaClient(feathersClient, {
  pinia,
  idField: 'id',
  services: {
    authors: {
      setupInstance(author, { app }) {
        const withDefaults = useInstanceDefaults({ setInstanceRan: false }, author)
        return withDefaults
      },
    },
    posts: {
      idField: 'id',
      setupInstance(post, { app }) {
        app.storeAssociated(post, {
          author: 'authors',
          comments: 'comments',
        })
        const withDefaults = useInstanceDefaults({ authorIds: [] }, post)

        return withDefaults
      },
    },
    comments: {
      idField: 'id',
      setupInstance(comment, { app }) {
        const withDefaults = useInstanceDefaults({ description: '', isComplete: false }, comment)
        return withDefaults
      },
    },
  },
})

Now when you create an instance with data matching those keys, the related data will move to the associated stores.

const post = api.service('posts').new({
  title: 'foo',
  author: { id: 2, name: 'Steve' },
  comments: [
    { id: 1, text: 'comment 1', authorId: 1, postId: 1 },
    { id: 2, text: 'comment 2', authorId: 1, postId: 1 },
  ],
})

post.createInStore()

If you inspect post in the above example, you'll find the following:

• post.author is an author instance, already created in the authors service store.
• post.comments is an array of comment instances, already created in the comments service store.
• The post.author and individual records in post.comments are all reactive. So if they get updated in their stores, the values on post will reflect the change.
• The post.comments list length is not reactive.
• We still have to manually call post.createInStore() afterwards to add it to the posts service store.
• Finally, all of the values have been rewritten as non-enumerable, so if you call post.save(), the related data will not be sent in the request to the API server.