I recently started using Node.js + Express.js (generated with pug) + pg-promise for handling db.
My first target is to obtain data from Postgres (already set up) and display it pretty using render and pug. Let's say it is user list from Users table.
On this restful tutorial I have learned how to get data and return it as JSON - it worked.
Based on Mozilla's tutorial I seperated my code:
routes/users.js: where for '/' I call user_controller.user_list method (using router.get)
controllers/userController.js I have exported user_list where I would like to ask model for data and call render if I have results
queries.js which is kinda my model? But I'm not sure. It has API: connection to db with promises and one function for every query I am going to use in Controllers. I believe I should have like one Model file per table (or any logical entity) but where to store pgp connections?
This file is based on first tutorial I mentioned
// queries.js (connectionString is set properly to my postgres)
var pgp = require('pg-promise')(options);
var db = pgp(connectionString);
function getUsers(req, res, next) {
db.any('SELECT (user_id, username) FROM public.users ORDER BY user_id ASC LIMIT 1000')
.then(function (data) {
res.json({ data: data });
})
.catch(function (err) {
return next(err);
});
}
module.exports = {
getUsers: getUsers
};
Here starts my problem as most tutorials uses mongoose which is very model-db-schema-friendly and what I have is simple 'SELECT ...' string I pass to pg-promise's any() function.
Therefore I have no model class like User.
In userControllers.js I don't know how to call getUsers() to handle its data. Returning JS object from getUsers() would be nice.
Also: where should I call render? In controller or only in
db.any(...).then(function (data) { <--here--> })
Before, I also tried to embed whole Postgres handling into Controller but from db.any() I got this array for handling:
[{ row: '(1,John)' },{ row: '(2,Amy)' },{ row: '(50,Peter)' } ]
Didn't know how go from there as I probably lost my API functionality as well ;-)
I am browsing through multiple tutorials how to handle MVC but usually they handle MongoDB and
satisfy readers with res.send() not render().
I am not sure that I understand what your question is exactly about, but since I do not have enough reputation to comment, I'll do my best to help you with your interrogations. :)
First, regarding the queries.js file, it is IMO not exactly a model, but rather a DAO (Data Access Object) file. DAO comes between you Model (which is actually you database) and your Controller layers. There usually is a DAO file per object (User, Pet, whatever you want) in your data model.
When the data model is rather complex, it can be useful to use an Object Relational Mapping (ORM) such as Mongoose to map your database and execute complexe processes on your objects. In such a case, you might need a specific file per object so as to describe your model and store your queries. But since you don't need an ORM, you DAO can directly interact with your database. That is why you do not have a User.js file.
Regarding the way the db object should be used, I think you should refer directly to pg-promise documentation on the matter.
IMPORTANT: For any given connection, you should only create a single
Database object in a separate module, to be shared in your application
(see the code example below). If instead you keep creating the
Database object dynamically, your application will suffer from loss in
performance, and will be getting a warning in a development
environment (when NODE_ENV = development)
As a matter of fact, a db object in pg-promise sort of represents the database itself and is actually designed for the simultaneous use of several databases, which does not seem to be your case for the moment.
Finally, when it comes to the render function, I believe it should be in the controller, as your DAO is not supposed to know how the data it has gathered is going to be used.
Modularity is always a time-saving choice on the long-term.
Furthermore, note that you might later need a Business Layer between your DAO and your controller, in order to preprocess and postprocess data you are going to persist or to display. In such a case, if you need for instance to ask for data from your database, you will need to render data after it is processed by the Business layer. If the render is made in the DAO layer, it will not be possible.
In the link I provided earlier to pg-promise's db object connection, you will also find documentation on the any() method. You might already have looked it up.
It specifically states that it returns
A promise object that represents the query result:
When no rows are returned, it resolves with an empty array.
When 1 or more rows are returned, it resolves with the array of rows.
so your returned data is a JS Array. If you want to make it a JS object, just use
JSON.stringify(yourArray) to process your data before rendering it in your controller.
But I wonder if Pug is not able to use your data directly.
Also, if you cannot get any data out of your DAO, maybe you should check that your data object is not empty, as such a case is tolerated by the any() method. If you expect your query to always return something, you might want to consider using the many() or the one() methods.
I hope this helps you.
Related
I am using Mongoose 5+ and currently do not have the option of upgrading to Mongoose 6 (which seems to have fixed several issues concerning types and stuff)
I am refactoring from js to ts, and I keep hitting a wall when dealing with pre hooks. In this particular case, I want to understand how to pass generic types to the pre hook and not have typescript get mad that i am trying to access certain fields of this
So my prehook looks like this. It is using findOneAndUpdate and in this case the this is bound to the Query, which gives me some particular properties to access, such as this._update and this._conditions. I use this._update to access the information I am trying to update in this document, and I use that to modify another document in another collection before committing to the change in this document. I use this so the operation will be atomic and no changes will be committed to the DB if any of the other writes fails. However, typescript does not like me accessing values from this and outlined below are the errors i get
unitsSchema.pre('findOneAndUpdate', async function(next){
const update = this._update; //TSError: Property '_update' does not exist on type 'Query<any, any>'
const conditions = this._conditions; //Property '_conditions' does not exist on type 'Query<any, any>'
if(update.isDeleted === true){
//remove the unit from the condo model
await Condos.updateOne({_id:conditions.condoID},
{$pull:{
units:conditions._id
}}).catch(e=>next(e));
await UnitSttmt.updateMany({unitID:conditions._id},
{isDeleted:true})
.catch(e=>next(e));
}
//I even get an error here for some reason, i dont understand why here next is expecting a required argument, but not on other similar hooks
next(); // Expected 1 arguments, but got 0
}
I have tried passing it my document interface which extends mongoose.Document type and some other types too, but to no avail. Does anyone have any insight on how to get typescript to recognize the available Query paramters that exist?
Some examples I have tried
unitsSchema.pre<Query<any, UnitsDocument>>(...)
// this one obviously works but kind of defeats the purpose, but at least it gets rid of my error
unitsSchema.pre<any>(...)
also want ot mention the code works fine as javascript, it must be an error or limitation in the type declarations.. or maybe I'm just not supposed to be accessing those fields from the Query this ?
I am fairly new to MongoDB and Mongoose, I am really confused about why some of the middleware works at the document and some works on query. I am also confused about why some of the query methods return documents and some return queries. If a query is returning document it is acceptable, but why a query return query and what really it is.
Adding more to my question what is a Document function and Model or Query function, because both of them have some common methods like updateOne.
Moreover, I have gathered all these doubts from the mongoose documentation.
Tl;dr: the type of middleware most commonly defines what the this variable in a pre/post hook refers to:
Middleware Hook
'this' refers to the
methods
Document
Document
validate, save, remove, updateOne, deleteOne, init
Query
Query
count, countDocuments, deleteMany, deleteOne, estimatedDocumentCount, find, findOne, findOneAndDelete, findOneAndRemove, findOneAndReplace, findOneAndUpdate, remove, replaceOne, update, updateOne, updateMany
Aggregation
Aggregation object
aggregate
Model
Model
insertMany
Long explanation:
Middlewares are nothing, but built-in methods to interact with the database in different ways. However, as there are different ways to interact with the database, each with different advantages or preferred use-cases, they also behave differently to each other and therefor their middlewares can behave differently, even if they have the same name.
By themselves, middlewares are just shorthands/wrappers for the mongodbs native driver that's being used under the hood of mongoose. Therefor, you can usually use all middlewares, as if you were using regular methods of objects without having to care if it's a Model-, Query-, Aggregation- or Document-Middleware, as long as it does what you want it to.
However, there are a couple of use-cases where it is important to differentiate the context in which these methods are being called.
The most prominent use-case being hooks. Namely the *.pre() and the *.post() hooks. These hooks are methods that you can "inject" into your mongoose setup, so that they are being executed before or after specific events.
For example:
Let's assume I have the following Schema:
const productSchema = new Schema({
name: 'String',
version: {
type: 'Number',
default: 0
}
});
Now, let's say you always want to increase the version field with every save, so that it automatically increases the version field by 1.
The easiest way to do this would be to define a hook that takes care of this for us, so we don't have to care about this when saving an object. If we for example use .save() on the document we just created or fetched from the database, we'd just have to add the following pre-hook to the schema like this:
productSchema.pre('save', function(next) {
this.version = this.version + 1; // or this.version += 1;
next();
});
Now, whenever we call .save() on a document of this schema/model, it will always increment the version before it is actually being saved, even if we only changed the name.
However, what if we don't use the .save() or any other document-only middleware but e.g. a query middleware like findOneAndUpdate() to update an object?
Then, we won't be able to use the pre('save') hook, as .save() won't be called. In this case, we'd have to implement a similar hook for findOneAndUpdate().
Here, however, we finally come to the differences in the middlewares, as the findOneAndUpdate() hook won't allow us to do that, as it is query hook, meaning it does not have access to the actual document, but only to the query itself. So if we e.g. only change the name of the product the following middleware would not work as expected:
productSchema.pre('findOneAndUpdate', function(next) {
// this.version is undefined in the query and would therefor be NaN
this.version = this.version + 1;
next();
});
The reason for this is, that the object is directly updated in the database and not first "downloaded" to nodejs, edited and "uploaded" again. This means, that in this hook this refers to the query and not the document, meaning, we don't know what the current state of version is.
If we were to increment the version in a query like this, we'd need to update the hook as follows, so that it automatically adds the $inc operator:
productSchema.pre('findOneAndUpdate', function(next) {
this.$inc = { version: 1 };
next();
});
Alternatively, we could emulate the previous logic by manually fetching the target document and editing it using an async function. This would be less efficient in this case, as it would always call the db twice for every update, but would keep the logic consistent:
productSchema.pre('findOneAndUpdate', async function() {
const productToUpdate = await this.model.findOne(this.getQuery());
this.version = productToUpdate.version + 1;
next();
});
For a more detailed explanation, please the check the official documentation that also has a designated paragraph for the problem of having colliding naming of methods (e.g. remove() being both a Document and Query middleware method)
I'm using MongoDB and Mongoose in a REST API. Some deployments require a replica set, thus separate read/write databases, so as a result I have separate read/write connections in the API. However, more simple deployments don't need a replica-set, and in those cases I point my read/write connections to the same MongoDB instance and database.
My general approach is to create all models for both connections at API start up. Even when read/write conns are connecting to same database, I am able to create the same models on both connections without error.
let ReadUser = dbRead.model('User', userSchema);
let WriteUser = dbWrite.model('User', userSchema);
// no error even when dbRead and dbWrite point to same DB
Trouble comes when until I start using Mongoose Discriminators.
let ReadSpecialUser = ReadUser.discriminator('SpecialUser', specialUserSchema);
let WriteSpecialUser = WriteUser.discriminator('SpecialUser', specialUserSchema);
// Results in this Error when read and write point to same DB:
// Error: Discriminator with name "SpecialUser" already exists
I'm look for an elegant way to deal with this. Is there a way to query the db for discriminators that are already in use?
According to the Mongoose API docs the way to do this is to use Model.discriminators. So in the case above it would be
ReadUser.discriminators
or
WriteUser.discriminators
However this doesn't return anything for me. What does work is using
Object.keys(Model.discriminators)
As expected this gets you an array of strings of the discriminator names you've set previously.
If you want to use the existing discriminator model and know its name what you can do is use Model.discriminators.discriminatorName. In your example it would be:
let ReadSpecialUserDocument = new ReadUser.discriminators.SpecialUser({
key: value,
key: value,
});
ReadSpecialUserDocument.save()
This can be useful when you need to reuse the discriminator at different times, and its name is tied to your data in some way.
I'm using Sequelize.js for ORM and have a few associations (which actually doesn't matter now). My models get get and set methods from those associations. Like this (from docs):
var User = sequelize.define('User', {/* ... */})
var Project = sequelize.define('Project', {/* ... */})
// One-way associations
Project.hasOne(User)
/*
...
Furthermore, Project.prototype will gain the methods getUser and setUser
according to the first parameter passed to define.
*/
So now, I have Project.getUser(), which returns a Promise. But if I call this twice on the very same object, I get SQL query executed twice.
My question is - am I missing something out, or this is an expected behavior? I actually don't want to make additional queries each time I call the same method on this object.
If this is expected - should I use custom getters with member variables which I manually populate and return if present? Or there is something more clever? :)
Update
As from DeBuGGeR's answer - I understand I can use includes when making a query in order to eager load everything, but I simply don't need it, and I can't do it all the time. It's waste of resources and a big overhead if I load my entire DB at the beginning, just to understand (by some criteria) that I won't need it. I want to make additional queries depending on situation. But I also can't afford to destroy all models (DAO objects) that I have and create new ones, with all the info inside them. I should be able to update parts of them, which are missing (from relations).
If you use getUser() it will make the query call, it dosent give you access to the user. You can manually save it to project.user or project.users depending on the association.
But you can try Eager Loading
Project.find({
include: [
{ model: User, as: 'user' } // here you HAVE to specify the same alias as you did in your association
]
}).success(function(project){
project.user // contains the user
});
Also e.g of getUser(). Dont expect it to automatically cache user and dont override this cleverly as it will create side effects. getUser is expected to get from database and it should!
Project.getUser().then(function(user){
// user is available and is a sequelize object
project.user = user; // save project.user and use it till u want to
})
The first part of things is clear - every call to get[Association] (for example Project.getUser()) WILL result in database query.
Sequelize does not maintain any kind of state nor cache for the results. You can get user in the Promisified result of the call, but if you want it again - you will have to make another query.
What #DeBuGGeR said - about using accessors is also not true - accessors are present only immediately after a query, and are not preserved.
As sometimes this is not ok, you have to implement some kind of caching system by yourself. Here comes the tricky part:
IF you want to use the same get method Project.getUser(), you won't be able to do it, as Sequelize overrides your instanceMethods. For example, if you have the association mentioned above, this won't work:
instanceMethods: {
getUser: function() {
// check if you have it, otherwise make a query
}
}
There are few possible ways to fix it - either change Sequelize core a little (to first check if the method exists), or use some kind of wrapper to those functions.
More details about this can be found here: https://github.com/sequelize/sequelize/issues/3707
Thanks to mickhansen for the cooperation on how to understand what to do :)
There are two different methods to obtain a reference to a MongoDB collection - both of them are used throughout the official documentation.
There is
var mycollection = db.collection('mycollection)'
and there is
db.collection('mycollection', function(err, collection){
//use collection
}
I tend to use the second one because it is consistent with "db.createCollecion(collection, callback)"
What is the difference between these methods?
Is there any database interaction when using these methods?
If you look at the code for Database, currently around line 456, you'll see that the only difference between the two in the way you've used them is how the collection object is returned. If you specify a callback, then it's returned that way, otherwise, it's returned as the value to the function. If you set the options however and specifically the option strict to true, you need to use the callback. When strict is set to true, the collection is verified before continuing (asynchronously).
Given that collections can be created dynamically (and usually are upon first use), there often isn't need to use strict mode.
So, it's really matter of personal coding preference otherwise. There is normally no activity to the database when creating a Collection object via: db.collection('collectionname') with the exception I mentioned above.