Dealing with lists in properties

[jacomyma]

I propose a new feature to deal with a common issue. I often need to deal with properties that are lists of items. For instance I have a list of jobs to display, and I have a property called "jobsList" that is an array. Domino is not much adapted to dealing with this kind of properties. I'll just write here what I would like.

(...to be continued, sorry no more time today)

[jacomyal]

Just a short reminder, I need to know more :)

[jacomyma]

(...continuation) Ok, so the issue is that I have a list and I need to update only certain elements, or even a single element. For now I just write the whole process in the 'success' function of the service querying these elements to update. I imagine that we could have a way to do it without editing a success function.

We do not need to edit a success function when we update a single property, because we have the path. I would like the same type of helper to just update a single element in a list. Honestly I'm not sure this is a better solution than a custom success function, but maybe you have an idea... The fact is that I (almost) always write the same thing in my success functions. The process is typically:

• get the id of the element (or list of ids)
• update the element(s) that have this id
• trigger an update event on the list
• trigger update events for the updated elements, with the id as data linked to each event (not always)

The same way, it may be possible to have an index for my elements. In my previous example, I have a "jobs_byId" property, in order to retrieve easily an element. Here is a suggestion but there are other solutions:

• having a "indexed-list" type of property. Ex: I declare the "jobs" property with type "indexed-list"
• services have an 'updater' feature, similar to the setter feature, but dedicated to updating an indexed-list. Ex: my service 'getJob' has a 'updater' to 'jobs' (and a path) so that the job is updated in the list. Of course I also have a service 'getAllJobs' has a setter to 'jobs', because in this case I want to reset the whole list
• when the a 'indexed-list' property is updated, its index is updated also. Both are always linked.
• we just need to know how to retrieve an id inside the objects of the list. This coud be a property of the property (!). Ex: 'jobs' has a property 'id-path': 'id' or a function 'retreive-id': function(obj){return obj.id]

Maybe this can be done with shortcuts, but I do not understand how to do it.

[jacomyal]

We have done nothing yet about this in the new version (see the reboot-proposal branch to know more).

I'll try to take this into account before releasing it.