v1.0.0

[jcspencer]

I'm currently looking at things that would be a good addition for a 1.0 release.

The list I have so far:

1. As suggested by @jonstorer is to add the ability to call .create() on singular fields created view .hasMany(), using the Mongoose's Virtuals.
2. To move away from monkey-patching mongoose, and instead adding the ability to use mongo-relation as a plugin.
3. One to one relationships would be a great addition
4. As also suggested by @jonstorer, the option to turn off keeping references to children in parent document whilst using .hasMany() would be helpful, especially when storing large amounts of child documents.
5. HasMany should not set the id on the parent document.

If you have questions/suggestions, let me know, I'm sure there are many other things that would make 1.0 even better 😄

[jonstorer]

James,

Great idea! I had a lot of the same ideas. My responses are inline:

On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 4:14 AM, James Spencer notifications@github.com wrote:
I'm currently looking at things that would be a good addition for a 1.0 release.

The list I have so far:

As suggested by @jonstorer is to add the ability to call .create() on singular fields created view .hasMany(), using the Mongoose's Virtuals.

Our plan could change, but the current thinking for hasOne is to create a relationshipDocument to be returned from the virtual.get() like:

// create an object we can work with that is also a MongooseDocument
relationDocument = {  __proto__: Document }
// set a getter that will return an object so we can `populate`, `destroy`, etc.
this.paths['user'].get(function(){ new relationDocument(child_id: this.val)

To move away from monkey-patching mongoose, and instead adding the ability to use mongo-relation as a plugin.

Same type of thing here:

// create our own objects for hold the relation
relationArray = { __proto__: MongooseArray }
relationDocument = { __proto__ : Document } 

One to one relationships would be a great addition

use relationDocument in the virtual's get & set methods to give us 'create', 'find', 'populate', 'remove', 'delete', 'append', 'concat'

As also suggested by @jonstorer, the option to turn off keeping references to children in parent document whilst using .hasMany() would be helpful, especially when storing large amounts of child documents.

Already in the works, we're adding a 'setParent' option when setting the reference on the path. We'll use that to conditionally set values on the parent.

HasMany should not set the id on the parent document.

Ditto.

If you have questions/suggestions, let me know, I'm sure there are many other things that would make 1.0 even better 😄

The way I think about relations is:

• hasOne
  • I look in the child collection for 1 document that has my ID as a foreign key.
  • I do not know the id of the child document.
  • I expect the child to belongsTo me.
• hasMany
  • I look in the child collection for N documents that have my ID as a foreign key.
  • I do not know the ids of the child documents.
  • I expect the children to belongsTo me.
• belongsTo
  • I look in the parent collection for 1 document by the ID I have saved as a foreign key.
  • I know the ID of my parent.
  • I expect my parent to hasMany or hasOne of me.
• hasAndBelongsToMany
  • I look in the child collection for N documents by the IDs I have saved as foreign keys.
  • I know the IDs of my children.
  • Both sides of this relationship view the other as children.
  • I expect my children to hasAndBelongsToMany of me.
  • However, it is possible to set the child collection to not associate back to a parent. This way, I maintain an array of IDs, but the children know nothing of their parents.

[jcspencer]

Plugin

In terms of turning Mongo-Relation into a plugin, I suggest we use mongoose-long as a reference.

Standard Mongoose plugins only have access to an instance of Schema, rather than the Mongoose object itself.

Simply, a function is passed the Mongoose Object, patches it, and returns the modified version, like
so:

var mongoose = require('mongo-relation')(require('mongoose'));

This is much cleaner than a singular require call, and follows the LevelUP require pattern.

Add option to disable storing child documents

I think the most logical option here would be to pass an options object to either the global Mongoose patch function, or when creating a relationship. This would give the option storeParent (or something similar) stops Mongo-Relation from storing it's children's ObjectIds in an array. Although, we should add a method when this is enabled to grab an array of child ObjectIds just in case.

HasOne .create()

In terms of adding the ability to call .create() on singular fields created via .hasOne(), I think @jonstorer is spot on with the idea of using Virtuals to add these methods!

And again, If you have questions/suggestions, let me know!

[jonstorer]

@JamesS237 I'm a big fan of the mongoose-long loading pattern. I just think we're a long way from being there. Please take a look at https://github.com/shake-apps/mongo-relation/pull/2/files for my initial pass at remove the parent association in a hasMany.