AGCollection

SocketCluster real-time collection component for reactive front ends. Designed to work with ag-crud-rethink https://github.com/SocketCluster/ag-crud-rethink

Setup

Inside the directory from which front end files are served, run the command:

npm install ag-collection --save

You can import it in your scripts like this (example; your exact path may differ):

import AGCollection from '/node_modules/ag-collection/ag-collection.js';

Usage

See https://github.com/socketcluster/ag-sample-inventory for sample app which demonstrates this component in action.

An AGCollection object can be instantiated like this:

this.productsCollection = new AGCollection({
  // Pass the SocketCluster socket object.
  socket: pageOptions.socket,
  type: 'Product',
  fields: ['name', 'qty', 'price'],
  view: 'categoryView',
  viewParams: {category: this.categoryId},
  pageOffset: 0,
  pageSize: 5,
  getCount: true
});

The AGCollection allows you to read and manipulate a collection of documents in RethinkDB from the front end. The productsCollection.value property is an array of Product objects which make up this collection; this array updates in real-time to match the collection on the server. The productsCollection.meta property is an object which holds metadata about the collection's current state. It has the following properties: pageOffset, pageSize, isLastPage and count.

If using a reactive front end framework like VueJS, you can bind the productsCollection.value and productsCollection.meta properties directly to your template since the array/object reference never changes (only the internal values/properties change). In VueJS, you can instantiate and attach the collection value and metadata to your component like this:

data: function () {
  this.productsCollection = new AGCollection({
    socket: pageOptions.socket,
    type: 'Product',
    fields: ['name', 'qty', 'price'],
    view: 'categoryView',
    viewParams: {category: this.categoryId},
    pageOffset: 0,
    pageSize: 5,
    getCount: true
  });

  return {
    products: this.productsCollection.value,
    productsMeta: this.productsCollection.meta
  };
},

Then you can bind this data to your template like this:

// Iterate over the products array and render available properties of each product.
<tr v-for="product of products">
  <td>{{product.name}}</td>
  <td>{{product.qty}}</td>
  <td>{{product.price}}</td>
</tr>

Supported attributes

The AGCollection tag supports the following attributes:

• socket: A socketcluster-client socket; note that the same global socket object can be shared between multiple AGCollection and AGModel instances.
• type: This is the model/table name in RethinkDB.
• fields: The document fields to load for this collection.
• view: The view to use for this collection. See https://github.com/SocketCluster/ag-crud-rethink for details about views.
• viewParams: This should be a JSON object which will be used for filtering results for your view. If you are using the ag-crud-rethink plugin on the backend, this data will be passed as the third argument to your transform function on your schema.
• pageOffset: An integer which represents the current page of results within the collection.
• pageSize: The number of results per page.
• getCount: This is false by default; if set to true, the collection.meta.count property will be populated with the total number of items in the collection; otherwise it always stays null (performance is better if getCount is false).