/loopback-ds-timestamp-mixin

A mixin to automatically generate createdAt and updatedAt Date attributes for loopback Models

Primary LanguageJavaScriptISC LicenseISC

NPM

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TIMESTAMPS

This module is designed for the Strongloop Loopback framework. It adds createdAt and updatedAt attributes to any Model.

createdAt will be set to the current Date the by using the default property of the attribute.

updatedAt will be set for every update of an object through bulk updateAll or instance model.save methods.

This module is implemented with the before save Operation Hook which is relatively new to the loopback framework so your loopback-datasource-juggler module must greater than version 2.23.0.

INSTALL

  npm install --save loopback-ds-timestamp-mixin

MIXINSOURCES

With loopback-boot@v2.8.0 mixinSources have been implemented in a way which allows for loading this mixin without changes to the server.js file previously required.

Add the mixins property to your server/model-config.json like the following:

{
  "_meta": {
    "sources": [
      "loopback/common/models",
      "loopback/server/models",
      "../common/models",
      "./models"
    ],
    "mixins": [
      "loopback/common/mixins",
      "../node_modules/loopback-ds-timestamp-mixin",
      "../common/mixins"
    ]
  }
}

SERVER.JS

DEPRECATED: See MIXINSOURCES above for configuration. Use this method ONLY if you cannot upgrade to loopback-boot@v2.8.0.

In your server/server.js file add the following line before the boot(app, __dirname); line.

...
var app = module.exports = loopback();
...
// Add Timestamp Mixin to loopback
require('loopback-ds-timestamp-mixin')(app);

boot(app, __dirname, function(err) {
  'use strict';
  if (err) throw err;

  // start the server if `$ node server.js`
  if (require.main === module)
    app.start();
});

CONFIG

To use with your Models add the mixins attribute to the definition object of your model config.

  {
    "name": "Widget",
    "properties": {
      "name": {
        "type": "string",
      }
    },
    "mixins": {
      "TimeStamp" : true
    }
  }

BOOT OPTIONS

The attribute names createdAt and updatedAt are configurable. To use different values for the default attribute names add the following parameters to the mixin options.

You can also configure whether createdAt and updatedAt are required or not. This can be useful when applying this mixin to existing data where the required constraint would fail by default.

In this example we change createdAt and updatedAt to createdOn and updatedOn, respectively. We also change the default required to false.

  {
    "name": "Widget",
    "properties": {
      "name": {
        "type": "string",
      }
    },
    "mixins": {
      "TimeStamp" : {
        "createdAt" : "createdOn",
        "updatedAt" : "updatedOn",
        "required" : false
      }
    }
  }

OPERATION OPTIONS

By passing in additional options to an update or save operation you can control when this mixin updates the updatedAt field. The passing true to the option skipUpdatedAt will skip updating the updatedAt field.

In this example we assume a book object with the id of 2 already exists. Normally running this operation would change the updatedAt field to a new value.

Book.updateOrCreate({name: 'New name', id: 2}, {skipUpdatedAt: true}, function(err, book) {
  // book.updatedAt will not have changed
});

TESTING

You'll need jscs and jshint globally installed to run the tests which can be installed with this command: npm install -g jshint jscs. These tools help maintain style and error checking.

Run the tests in test.js

  npm test

Run with debugging output on:

  DEBUG='loopback-ds-timestamp-mixin' npm test

LICENSE

ISC