Breeze.js : how to store an entity relation using the OData adapter

Question

My goal is to persist a simple relationship between two breeze entities on my OData server.

I've setup a server, I am able to:

insert data
query data
create a relation between two entities client-side
BUT not able to persist the relationship server-side.

Any ideas of what I'm missing?

Below is my setup details

I'm using OData/MongoDB backend running JayData on Node.js (virtualBox, ubuntu 12.04, node.js, MongoDB)
I have created a simple data model with a user and a person entity based on this stack overflow question. This is the JayData datamodel definition

>

$data.Class.define("$org.Types.user", $data.Entity, null, {
    Id: {type: "id", key: true, computed: true, nullable: false },
    Person: { type: "$org.Types.person", inverseProperty: "User", required:true },
    EmailAddress: { type: "string"},
    Password: { type: "string"}
}, null)

$data.Class.define("$org.Types.person", $data.Entity, null, {
    Id: {type: "id", key: true, computed: true, nullable: false },
    User: { type: "$org.Types.user", inverseProperty: "Person"},
    FirstName: { type: "string"},
    LastName: { type: "string"}
}, null);


$data.Class.defineEx("$org.Types.Context", [$data.EntityContext, $data.ServiceBase], null, {
    User: {type: $data.EntitySet, elementType: $org.Types.user } ,
    Person: {type: $data.EntitySet, elementType: $org.Types.person }
});

exports = $org.Types.Context;

I'm able to query the data using Breeze.js
I'm able to insert User and Person entities using Breeze.js
I'm able to set a relation in Breeze and I see the changes to the entities
I've updated Breeze.js to 1.3.3

>

var manager = new breeze.EntityManager('api/');
// other breeze initialization stuff, metadata etc.

var person = manager.createEntity('Person', undefined, breeze.EntityState.Detached);
var user = manager.createEntity('User', undefined, breeze.EntityState.Detached);

// set other fields, name, email, password
user.Person(user);
manager.addEntity(user);
manager.addEntity(person);

// save the changes
manager.saveChanges().then(function() { // etc

But I only see two OData post for the two entities but nothing to tie the two entities together

I ruled out the OData adapter as both the WebAPI and OData adapter call the same functions in the Breeze code base and there are multiple Breeze/WebAPI that demonstrate the ability to query and inserted related entities.
I haven't seen a Breeze.js / OData sample that seems to address this.
The closest example that works is a datajs code sample. It posts the related entity to /$links/ to create the relationship (something I don't see in the OData adapter of neither Breeze.js or JayData).

Robesz Robesz · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-17T14:28:26

I've never used Breeze with JayData server, but I've been using JayData client library to save data over OData for a year and it works with static schema (you generate it with JaySvcUtil) and dynamic schema (grabs the metadata from the server in runtime) as well.ű

To important things:

use typed entites, not POCO objects

set the required side of the relationship to have the items persisted

<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.9.1.min.js"></script>
<script src="http://include.jaydata.org/datajs-1.0.3.min.js"></script>
<script src="http://include.jaydata.org/jaydata.js"></script>
<script>
        var url = 'http://localhost:54001/personService';

        $data.service(url, function(contextFactory, contextType){
            var db = contextFactory();
            db.onReady(function(){

                var user = new db.User.elementType({ EmailAddress: '[email protected]'});
                var person = new db.Person.elementType({ FistName: 'Joe', LastName: 'Smith', User: user }); //set the value to the required side of the relationship to have your entities saved in the batch
                db.Person.add(person)

                db.saveChanges(function () {
                    db.Person.include('User').toArray(function (p) { console.log(p);});
                });
            })
        });

disclaimer: I'm member of the JayData dev team, so you can help you with the server-side, too.

Breeze.js : how to store an entity relation using the OData adapter

1 Answers