ampersand-sync

Standalone, modern-browser-only version of Backbone.Sync as Common JS module.

Part of the Ampersand.js toolkit for building clientside applications.

You probably won't use this directly, but it is used by ampersand-model and ampersand-rest-collection to provide the REST functionality.

As of v4.0 works in browsers and Node.js

browser support

IE9+ and any other browser.

Might work in IE8, but it's not officially supported.

install

npm install ampersand-sync

usage

var sync = require("ampersand-sync")
 
var rawRequest = sync(method, model, options)

method is a string used for choosing HTTP verb of the sync request. It has to be chosen from the keys of the following map:

{
      'create': 'POST',
      'update': 'PUT',
      'patch':  'PATCH',
      'delete': 'DELETE',
      'read':   'GET'
}

model (optional) is an ampersand-model object or equivalent. ajaxConfig and url fields of the model are used (if present) to override default options for the request. (for details on ajaxConfig see below)

If model is provided, model.toJSON is called and the result is used as body for create, update and patch methods.

When the request is made, request event is triggered on the model with arguments: (model, XMLHttpRequest, options, ajaxSettings) where ajaxSettings is the final configuration passed to http request implementation. In Node.js, object returned from request() will be passed in instead of XMLHttpRequest, so streaming is possible.

If model is null, some options are required to form a correct http request. Please apply common sense.

options (optional) are used to override any settings for the http request and provide callbacks for the results or errors.

rawRequest is returned. In the browser, it is an XMLHttpRequest object instance, in Node.js it's the object returned by request().

ajaxConfig and options

both ajaxConfig and options can contain any and all of the options that xhr or request accepts.

Additional fields in ajaxConfig:

• xhrFields key that contains all fields which should be added to the raw XMLHttpObject before it's sent. xhrFields is only used in the browser and has no effect in node.

Additional fields in options:

• emulateHTTP - defaults to false
• emulateJSON - defaults to false
• xhrImplementation - can be used to override http request implementation for just this one call
• data - JSON serializable object to be sent as request body
• qsOptions - set stringify encoding options and create a different URI output if needed [see qs.stringify(string,[options])]
• success(body, 'success', responseObject) - optional callback to be called when request finishes successfully
• error(responseObject, 'error', error.message) - optional callback to be called when an error occurs (http request/response error or parsing response error)
• always(error, responseObject, body) - optional callback to be called when request finishes no matter what the result

running the tests

npm test

Tests are written in tape and since they require a browser environment it gets run in a headless browser using phantomjs via tape-run. Make sure you have phantomjs installed for this to work.

You can also run npm start then open a browser.

Changes

Notes on 4.0.0

Version 4 supports making requests in Node.js as well as browser. xhr is used in the browser and request in node, but you can substitute the request making code with your on implementation as well.

var sync = require("ampersand-sync/core")(whateverXhrYouWant)

For details on 4.0 release see v4.0 milestone

Important note on the 1.0.x versions

In moving from 1.0.1 to 1.0.2 we switched the underlying ajax implementation from jQuery's ajax to xhr. This changed slightly the options, as well as how ajaxConfig in models/collections operated when configured as a function.

Previously ajaxConfig would be passed the current ajax parameters object for modification, now it receives no arguments and should just return options to be merged in to the ajax parameters which will be passed to xhr.

This should have been a major release both for this module and its dependents (ampersand-model, ampersand-rest-collection, ampersand-collection-rest-mixin), but unfortunately we made a mistake and published as 1.0.2, and were too slow to rollback our mistake before workarounds were in place.

As such we are leaving the current 1.0.x versions in place, but deprecated, and suggest people upgrade to the latest versions of model/collection when they can which will contain the new implementation of xhr.

This should only affect your if you're using ajaxConfig as a function. If so you'll need to return the options you want to add, rather than expecting to be passed a params object to your ajaxConfig function. If you're having trouble ping us in freenode #&yet or on twitter: @philip_roberts & @henrikjoreteg.

credits

All credit goes to Jeremy Ashkenas and the other Backbone.js authors.

The ampersand-sync you are using today was made available to you by all the contributors listed here: https://github.com/AmpersandJS/ampersand-sync/graphs/contributors

license

MIT