What exactly does Ember.MODEL_FACTORY_INJECTIONS do? - ember.js

I'm using Ember CLI and by default it seems to set Ember.MODEL_FACTORY_INJECTIONS = true; in app.js.
I tried commenting this line out (and setting it to false) and then my app seemed to behave in some sort of strict mode. I got a bunch of failed assertions because some of my Model relations didn't explicitly specify the inverse.
This is the exact error:
You defined the 'account' relationship on (subclass of DS.Model), but multiple possible inverse relationships of type (subclass of DS.Model) were found on (subclass of DS.Model). Look at http://emberjs.com/guides/models/defining-models/#toc_explicit-inverses for how to explicitly specify inverses
Using the default Ember CLI generated app with Ember.MODEL_FACTORY_INJECTIONS = true;, I didn't get these errors. So I'm lead to believe that this flag changes core behaviour somehow.
Insight please!

DS.Model, your model base class, is just another class defined by Ember Data. In order for it to have special functionality like dependency injection, Ember needs to hook into that class so that when you instantiate it, the instance references the app container. When Ember.MODEL_FACTORY_INJECTIONS is on, Ember applies additional mixins to the class so it can.
You can use Ember.getOwner(instance) to get the app container (or owner) of an instance. This is how you can, for example, look up the store of your application or a controller instance. When you call MyModelClass.create() directly, the owner isn't set. You either need to use Ember.setOwner() or instantiate it with an existing owner. See ApplicationInstance#ownerInjection().
let owner = Ember.getOwner(this);
User.create(
owner.ownerInjection(),
{ username: 'rwjblue' }
)
However, many applications that use Ember Data don't instantiate model instances directly and don't need to do this.
You can currently use Ember.MODEL_FACTORY_INJECTIONS = true to opt in to the functionality, but I believe they're moving towards making that the default in the future.
So turning the feature off caused errors since certain mixins were not getting included in your model classes.

Related

Ember JS automatically register directory classes to DI

Creating in-repo-addon in Ember.JS gives a lot of possibilities. Today I've stumbled into a case when I wanted to register all classes in directory (for example my-dir) into Dependency Injector (same way it's done with services by Ember, but I wanted to use some other namespace).
For example I want to allow developer to create multiple classes inside proxy directory, and register all of them in DI under proxy: namespace. So later we can use:
Ember.Component.extend({
myProxy: Ember.inject('proxy:my'),
});
You'll need to do this using an initializer. More details on this here: https://guides.emberjs.com/v2.12.0/applications/dependency-injection/
The hard part may be getting all proxy items in s folder to automatically register ...
Edit
Looks like I didn't spend enough time thinking about this. You should be able to do at least part of this easily. There are two parts to this.
Part 1
Ember currently uses the ember-resolver to handle lookups for various items. If you check the tests for the resolver you'll notice that you should be able to map in anything you want: https://github.com/ember-cli/ember-resolver/blob/master/tests/unit/resolvers/classic/basic-test.js
So in your case, if you do a Ember.getOwner(this).lookup('proxy:main') from within an Ember instantiated class (a route, controller or component for instance) it would look in app/proxy/main.js which your addon could be populating.
Details on the Ember.getOwner lookup are available here: https://emberjs.com/api/classes/Ember.html#method_getOwner
Part 2
So at this point you can lookup proxies (which would be doable in an init method). But if we want to get truly elegant we'd want to allow Ember.inject.proxy('main') syntax.
Doing so would involve calling a private method inside of Ember.inject in an initializer. Because that naming scheme is changing in the new Javascript modules RFC, it may be unwise to try to add this syntactic sugar ...
So I'd advise avoiding touching that private API unless it's really important to your app design.

Ember observer not working on nested property

I have created a mock application to illustrate the situation I am facing: Mock App
In this application; I have created a service with a single boolean property and a function to toggle that property (x); and two components (one to toggle the service's property; the other to observe the number of toggles and display it). The observer lies in toggle-observer. It is added directly to service's property as: myService.x. The code is not working as is; however if the comment at line 14 of toggle-observer.js is commented out; the observer starts working.
My question is that, do I need to perform a get to the whole path of a nested observer property to get it working? Is this the expected behavior? If so, can somebody explain why? My best regards.
Note: This is a mock example to illustrate the case; it is not related to anything I am designing in a real app. I am trying to avoid observers as much as possible; but I ran into this situation while trying out sth. and decided to ask it.
From ember guide service
Injected properties are lazy loaded; meaning the service will not be
instantiated until the property is explicitly called. Therefore you
need to access services in your component using the get function
otherwise you might get an undefined.
From ember guide, unconsumed computed properties do not trigger observers.
By combining the above two concepts, we can come to the below conclusion,
You haven't used myService any of the property inside toggle-observer component so it will be undefined until you explicitly call get function or use it in template.
Unless you use it x property in toggle-observer component, then it will not trigger observer. You need to consume it either in toggle-observer.hbs file or in init method.

Ember-CLI - How to access application classes

Previously when I developed ember application I used App as my global object and every class was stored in this big object.
Like this
window.App.MyModel = Em.Object.extend({});
And in the browser console, I was able to do
App.MyModel.create();
So it was really easy for me to access MyModel class.
Now I started experiments with Ember-CLI, I don't have much experience with this kind of tools. I followed the documentations and I created my model Service like this.
var Service = Ember.Object.extend({});
export default Service
But now, how to access Service class from browser console?
Only way I found was:
App.__container__.resolve('model:service')
But I don't like it much. Is there better way? Btw, can you please explain how export works? Or is there some source (documentation, article) where I can study it?
Thanks a lot for response.
If you're aiming to have something available in most places throughout your application you'll typically want to register it on the container.
There are multiple ways to access the container, and you're correct in that the one you found was less than ideal. The running joke is "any time you directly access __container__ we need to add more underscores."
To directly control how things are registered on the container and injected into the container you typically want to use an initializer. Using initializers in ember-cli is super-easy, they're executed for you automatically.
Checking out the documentation you can see that you get access to the application's container as an argument which allows you to manipulate it in a safe manner.
Once you have access to the container you can use register and inject to make content easily available in particular locations. This was introduced here. One note, accessing things inside of the container from outside the context of your app (browser console) will require the usage of App.__container__ and that is the expected use pattern.
And the export you're running into is an ES6 module system construct, it's not Ember-specific. Playing with the ES6 module transpiler can give you a good sense of what goes in and what comes out in "we can do this today" type of JavaScript.
For ember 3.22, application classes can be accessed like so:
Ember.Namespace.NAMESPACES[1]._applicationInstances.values().next().value.lookup('service:state-events')
Note, you may need to modify the index in NAMESPACES[1] to be something other than 1. You can determine which namespace is your application when this returns true:
Ember.Namespace.NAMESPACES[1] instanceof Application
This approach is how ember-inspector accesses ember applications: https://github.com/emberjs/ember-inspector/blob/50db91b7bd26b12098cae774a307208fe0a47d75/ember_debug/main.js#L163-L168

Idiomatic way to use __container__.lookupFactory in Ember.js

In the notes of this commit, the Ember team have made it very clear that App.__container__.lookup() is not the way to get at controllers. Instead we should use the needs property.
I understand the rationale behind this, and the idiomatic way to access singleton controllers.
However, in my app, I have some cases where I need instance controllers. In that case, I am using App.__container__.lookupFactory() to get at the prototype which I can then create() or extend()
Is there a better way to do this (without using __container__?
Edit:
Here is an example use case.
App.MyContainerView = Ember.ContainerView.extend
...
addChildView: ->
#get("content").pushObject(App.MyChildView.create(...))
The above example will push a new view onto the stack (allowing views to be dynamically created)
However, these views will (may?) not have the right container (and other properties?) set due to being created using App.MyChildView.create(). This is especially true in cases where we are doing a partial integration of Ember into an existing app.
The way to create these views would instead be:
App.__container__.lookupFactory("view:my_child").create()
In which case everything would be ok.
Additional use cases exist, for creating instance controllers outside the context of the router.. but the idea is the same.
I don't know if you're still looking for an answer. I am also struggling with how to do things "the Ember way".
This answer put me on the right track, and should be relevant to your question:
"Please ensure this controller was instantiated with a container"
As for me, I had the same problem as in the above question: when I manually instantiated my App.AnyOtherController with App.AnyOtherController.create(...), then inside this controller, I could not access dependency injections (such as a session object that I make available to all my controllers and routes).
Instantiating the same controller this way solves the problem by giving the controller a container:
this.container.lookupFactory('controller:any_other').create(...)
You should be able to access this.container from any view, and I guess, any controller, as long as they have been given a container.
You can Ember.String.decamelize('AnyOther') to convert the CamelCase controller name to a suitable string.
More on containers here: http://ember.zone/beginning-to-understand-the-ember-js-container/
If it doesn't help you, I still hope this helps someone out there, as this container stuff is a bit tricky at first...

What's the difference between ember.js extend and create?

What's the difference between ember.js Object methods extend and create?
TLDR: You will find the answer in Ember guides: classes and instances.
Sometimes I see that one in the examples and sometimes the other. In particular, what's the difference between Em.Application.extend({}) and Em.Application.create({})?
If I declare my app like this, what does it mean?
Ember.Application.create({
MyController : Ember.ArrayController.extend({
}),
});
How can I access the instance of MyController? Do I need to create it somehow? I need to push some data into it.
The dead simple answer is that extend defines a new JS Class which inherits from the class you're extending, but does not create an instance of that class. create creates an instance of the class.
Em.Application is a particular case, because you're creating a namespace, not an object instance. I don't know when you'd ever want to extend Em.Application.
App = Em.Application.create(); // I have a new Em.Application namespace
App.A = Em.Object.extend(); // I have defined a new class, App.A,
// which inherits from Em.Object
var a = App.A.create(); // a now contains an instance of App.A.
I'd suggest you read "Naming Conventions", too.
ETA: And "Understanding Ember Objects", as suggested in zaplitny's comment.
From what little I understand, in layman's terms, you extend when you want to define a new object idea with properties that will never change(except for reopen), and exist throughout all versions of this object.
You create when you want to work with a particular individual (instance of) object. In other words, something with properties that will be changed by actions or other particular instances.
Often you only need to create relationships between objects, you don't need to speak about particular individual objects, but rather the idea of the object. Therefore, you don't need to create every time you extend.
Hopefully I'm understanding it correctly.