How to use a library to fetch data in Ember - ember.js

Question

I am still very new to the world of Ember, and I'm still trying to understand EmberJS and Ember Data (latest version). In my previous (non-Ember) Node app, I included a library that handled all my REST calls to where my data was stored. It set up the connection to the server and handled all the error handling and parsing into a nice and tidy JSON object, and even handled multiple calls to the server in case the response was too big for one call. I can fetch individual records, but if I wanted to fetch a bunch of records, all I had to do was initialize the library object ('myObj') and call myObj.fetchAll(config) to initiate the fetch. Then I just have to wait on several events.
Example
myObj.on('record', function() { // Each record is an event }
myObj.on('error', function () { ...}
myObj.on('end', function () { // After the last record is retrieved }}
I would very much still like to use this library in Ember, but I have no idea how to go about setting it up. I haven't been able to find any examples of creating my own Adapter (is that the right terminology) that would allow me to do this.
Is this something I can do with Ember, or is it not recommended?

Answer 1

I would strongly suggest you use ember-data before attempting something non-standard as you're learning. Virtually all the documentation, and help will specifically be about ember-data. This is a good starting point: http://guides.emberjs.com/v1.13.0/models/
It's perfectly possible to use your own models and use a custom rest interface. You initiate your myObj.fetchAll(config) call on the router. If it's waiting for an event, return a promise and resolve it when the event returns. I don't know anything about your library but it would look something like:
export default Ember.Route.extend({
model() {
return Ember.RSVP.Promise(function(resolve){
var records = [];
myObj.on("record", (record) => {
records.pushObject(record);
});
myObj.on("end", () => {
resolve(records);
});
myObj.fetchAll(ENV.config);
});
}
});
In imperfect contrast, this is how you glue things together from your adapter to your template normally in ember:
Configuring a REST endpoint:
export default DS.RESTAdapter.extend({
host: 'https://api.example.com'
});
Defining a model:
export default Model.extend({
name: attr('string')
});
Fetching data in your route:
export default Ember.Route.extend({
model() {
return this.store.findAll('person');
}
});
Rendering the data:
{{#each model as |person|}}
{{person.name}}
{{/each}}
It's all pretty straight forward if you stick to the default way of doing things.