Falcor Sync Model

The dilemma

A unified data store - Falcor Model#get() and Model#getValue() return promises, regardless of whether a value is cached. This allows all code that reads a Falcor model to be written in the same way, regardless of where the data lives.

Synchronous rendering - Unfortunately, current versions of Angular and React can only render synchronously, i.e. can't render promises. Using Falcor thus requires keeping a separate data store which duplicates the contents of the cache, and writing code to keep the two in sync.*

The solution

The goal of this lib is to allow a Falcor model to be used directly as a data store, by providing a way to read the model synchronously and still have it sync to its data source. As long as synchronous reads are only used for rendering, this won't interfere with Falcor's unified model ethic.

API

falcor-sync-model extends Falcor.Model by adding a single getValueSync() method which takes the same arguments as Falcor.Model#getValue(). The value is returned synchronously, and causes the model to load data from its datasource as a side effect.

Example

var SyncModel = require('falcor-sync-model');
var HttpDataSource = require('falcor-http-datasource');

var App = React.createClass({

  getInitialState() {
    return {
      store: new SyncModel({
        onChange: () => this.forceUpdate(),
        source: new HttpDataSource('/model.json')
      }).batch()
    }
  },

  render() {
    return <div>
      Hello {this.store.getValueSync('self.name')}!
    </div>
  }
});

Installation

npm install falcor-sync-model