Reflection on EmberJS objects? How to find a list of property keys without knowing the keys in advance - ember.js

Question

Is there a way to retrieve the set-at-creations properties of an EmberJS object if you don't know all your keys in advance?
Via the inspector I see all the object properties which appear to be stored in the meta-object's values hash, but I can't seem to find any methods to get it back. For example object.getProperties() needs a key list, but I'm trying to create a generic object container that doesn't know what it will contain in advance, but is able to return information about itself.

Answer 1

I haven't used this in production code, so your mileage may vary, but reviewing the Ember source suggests two functions that might be useful to you, or at least worth reviewing the implementation:
Ember.keys: "Returns all of the keys defined on an object or hash. This is useful when inspecting objects for debugging. On browsers that support it, this uses the native Object.keys implementation." Object.keys documentation on MDN
Ember.inspect: "Convenience method to inspect an object. This method will attempt to convert the object into a useful string description." Source on Github

Answer 2

I believe the simple answer is: you don't find a list of props. At least I haven't been able to.
However I noticed that ember props appear to be prefixed __ember, which made me solve it like this:
for (f in App.model) {
if (App.model.hasOwnProperty(f) && f.indexOf('__ember') < 0) {
console.log(f);
}
};
And it seems to work. But I don't know whether it's 100% certain to not get any bad props.
EDIT: Adam's gist is provided from comments. https://gist.github.com/1817543
var getOwnProperties = function(model){
var props = {};
for(var prop in model){
if( model.hasOwnProperty(prop)
&& prop.indexOf('__ember') < 0
&& prop.indexOf('_super') < 0
&& Ember.typeOf(model.get(prop)) !== 'function'
){
props[prop] = model[prop];
}
}
return props;
}

Answer 3

Neither of these answers are reliable, unfortunately, because any keys paired with a null or undefined value will not be visible.
e.g.
MyClass = Ember.Object.extend({
name: null,
age: null,
weight: null,
height: null
});
test = MyClass.create({name: 'wmarbut'});
console.log( Ember.keys(test) );
Is only going to give you
["_super", "name"]
The solution that I came up with is:
/**
* Method to get keys out of an object into an array
* #param object obj_proto The dumb javascript object to extract keys from
* #return array an array of keys
*/
function key_array(obj_proto) {
keys = [];
for (var key in obj_proto) {
keys.push(key);
}
return keys;
}
/*
* Put the structure of the object that you want into a dumb JavaScript object
* instead of directly into an Ember.Object
*/
MyClassPrototype = {
name: null,
age: null,
weight: null,
height: null
}
/*
* Extend the Ember.Object using your dumb javascript object
*/
MyClass = Ember.Object.extend(MyClassPrototype);
/*
* Set a hidden field for the keys the object possesses
*/
MyClass.reopen({__keys: key_array(MyClassPrototype)});
Using this method, you can now access the __keys field and know which keys to iterate over. This does not, however, solve the problem of objects where the structure isn't known before hand.

Answer 4

I use this:
Ember.keys(Ember.meta(App.YOUR_MODEL.proto()).descs)

Answer 5

None of those answers worked with me. I already had a solution for Ember Data, I was just after one for Ember.Object. I found the following to work just fine. (Remove Ember.getProperties if you only want the keys, not a hash with key/value.
getPojoProperties = function (pojo) {
return Ember.getProperties(pojo, Object.keys(pojo));
},
getProxiedProperties = function (proxyObject) {
// Three levels, first the content, then the prototype, then the properties of the instance itself
var contentProperties = getPojoProperties(proxyObject.get('content')),
prototypeProperties = Ember.getProperties(proxyObject, Object.keys(proxyObject.constructor.prototype)),
objectProperties = getPojoProperties(proxyObject);
return Ember.merge(Ember.merge(contentProperties, prototypeProperties), objectProperties);
},
getEmberObjectProperties = function (emberObject) {
var prototypeProperties = Ember.getProperties(emberObject, Object.keys(emberObject.constructor.prototype)),
objectProperties = getPojoProperties(emberObject);
return Ember.merge(prototypeProperties, objectProperties);
},
getEmberDataProperties = function (emberDataObject) {
var attributes = Ember.get(emberDataObject.constructor, 'attributes'),
keys = Ember.get(attributes, 'keys.list');
return Ember.getProperties(emberDataObject, keys);
},
getProperties = function (object) {
if (object instanceof DS.Model) {
return getEmberDataProperties(object);
} else if (object instanceof Ember.ObjectProxy) {
return getProxiedProperties(object);
} else if (object instanceof Ember.Object) {
return getEmberObjectProperties(object);
} else {
return getPojoProperties(object);
}
};

Answer 6

In my case Ember.keys(someObject) worked, without doing someObject.toJSON().

Answer 7

I'm trying to do something similar, i.e. render a generic table of rows of model data to show columns for each attribute of a given model type, but let the model describe its own fields.
If you're using Ember Data, then this may help:
http://emberjs.com/api/data/classes/DS.Model.html#method_eachAttribute
You can iterate the attributes of the model type and get meta data associated with each attribute.

Answer 8

This worked for me (from an ArrayController):
fields: function() {
var doc = this.get('arrangedContent');
var fields = [];
var content = doc.content;
content.forEach(function(attr, value) {
var data = Ember.keys(attr._data);
data.forEach(function(v) {
if( typeof v === 'string' && $.inArray(v, fields) == -1) {
fields.push(v);
}
});
});
return fields;
}.property('arrangedContent')