Models represent a structure of data which requires persistent storage. The data may live in any data-store but is interfaced in the same way. This allows your users to live in PostgreSQL and your user preferences to live in MongoDB and you will interact with the data models in the exact same way.
If you're using MySQL, a model might correspond to a table. If you're using MongoDB, it might correspond to a collection. In either case, our goal is to provide a simple, modular way of managing data without relying on any one type of database.
- Data types & attribute properties
- Validations
- Lifecycle callbacks
- Associations
- Instance & class methods
- Configuration
Model definitions contain attributes
, validations
, instance methods
, lifecycle callbacks
and class methods
. To define a model you will extend the Offshore.Collection
object and add
in your own attributes
and methods.
By default an attribute named id
will be automatically added to your model which will contain
an auto-incrementing number unique to each record. This will be your model's primary key
and
will be indexed when available. You can override this if you would like to define your own primary
key factory or attribute.
Each model will also get two timestamp attributes added by default: createdAt
and updatedAt
which
will track when a record went into the datastore and when it was last updated.
var Person = Offshore.Collection.extend({
// Identity is a unique name for this model and must be in lower case
identity: 'person',
// Connection
// A named connection which will be used to read/write to the datastore
connection: 'local-postgresql',
// Attributes are basic pieces of information about a model
attributes: {
firstName: 'string',
lastName: 'string',
age: 'integer',
birthDate: 'date',
emailAddress: 'email'
}
});
module.exports = Person;
You can also set options for each attribute. These include validations
and any indexing or unique
properties.
var Person = Offshore.Collection.extend({
identity: 'person',
connection: 'local-postgresql',
attributes: {
// Don't allow two objects with the same value
lastName: {
type: 'string',
unique: true
},
// Ensure a value is set
age: {
type: 'integer',
required: true
},
// Set a default value if no value is set
phoneNumber: {
type: 'string',
defaultsTo: '111-222-3333'
},
// Create an auto-incrementing value (not supported by all data-stores)
incrementMe: {
type: 'integer',
autoIncrement: true
},
// Index a value for faster queries
emailAddress: {
type: 'email', // Email type will get validated by the ORM
index: true
}
}
});
There might be times when you want to use an existing database in your models.
It is extremely important to set the migrate
property to safe
in your models when working with existing databases. If you do not to this, you will very likely lose data and do other terrible things as it tries to automatically adjust the schema.
In this example, the WB Company has prefixed all of their fields with wb_
. You'll notice that you can use the tableName
attribute, but also columnName
in the attributes
object.
var Widget = Offshore.Collection.extend({
identity: 'wbwidget',
connection: 'wb-widget-database',
tableName: 'wb_widgets',
attributes: {
id: {
type: 'integer',
columnName: 'wb_id',
primaryKey: true
},
name: {
type: 'string',
columnName: 'wb_name'
},
description: {
type: 'text',
columnName: 'wb_description'
}
migrate: 'safe',
autoPK: false,
autoCreatedAt: false,
autoUpdatedAt: false,
}
});
In addition, settings for automatically generating the primary key field (autoPK
), the created timestamp (autoCreatedAt
), and the modified timestamp (autoUpdatedAt
) are disabled in this example because either the model specifies them specifically, or they are actually absent from the existing database table.
All of these properties can be set as global defaults, or can be individually set in each model.
Property | Value | Default | Description |
---|---|---|---|
connection |
string |
- | The name of the connection to use for the model. |
identity |
string |
- | The programmatic name for the model. |
tableName |
string |
- | Use a custom database table/collection name rather than inferring it from the name of the model. |
migrate |
string |
alter |
Sets the schema to automatically alter the schema, drop the schema or make no changes (safe ). |
autoPK |
boolean |
true |
Automatically add an id attribute to the model to be the primary key. |
autoCreatedAt |
date |
Current time | Automatically add a createdAt date attribute to the model. |
autoUpdatedAt |
date |
The created time | Automatically add a updatedAt date attribute to the model. |
criteria |
object |
- | Criteria to apply each related queries |