Glossary of Terms

Glossary of terms used throughout this documentation.

Active Record Pattern

See Active Record Pattern.

Adapter

An adapter allows two incompatible interfaces to work together. In the case of JSData, Mappers define a standard CRUD interface, but the drivers for various persistence layers (MongoDB, HTTP, SQL, etc.) have different interfaces. Therefore, the JSData implements various adapters on top of the various drivers so that you can talk to those various persistence layers using a single interface as defined by JSData. See Adapter Pattern.

Adapter Pattern

See Adapter Pattern.

Associations

See Tutorial Step 7: Relations.

Collection

See List of JSData Components: Collection.

CRUD

Create. Read. Update. Delete. Used to refer to the common operation of manipulating records in a database.

Data Mapper Pattern

See Data Mapper Pattern.

DataStore

See List of JSData Components: DataStore.

Firebase Adapter

See js-data-firebase.

Eager loading

Eager loading is the process whereby a query for one type of entity also loads related entities as part of the query. See Tutorial Step 7: Relations.

Event

JSData components can emit events. Events are emitted to signal different things happening within JSData components. If you've registered listeners for events, your registered callback(s) will be invoked when the event is fired. See Events & Listeners.

HTTP Adapter

See js-data-http.

Identity Map

See Identity Map.

IndexedDB Adapter

See js-data-localforage.

JSON

See http://www.json.org/.

JSONAPI

See http://jsonapi.org/.

JSONSchema

See http://json-schema.org/.

Lazy loading

Lazy loading is the process whereby related entities are loaded via follow-up queries. See Tutorial Step 7: Relations.

LinkedCollection

See List of JSData Components: LinkedCollection.

Lifecycle Hook

Some JSData components have various "lifecycle" methods that are invoked at different times during normal operation. These methods are initially no-ops, but you can override them to inject your own behavior into the model lifecycle. Mapper#afterCreate() is one such hook.

Listener

A listener is a callback function that you've registered on an event emitter. The callback is invoked when the event(s) for which it is registered are fired. For example, here is the signature for the listener you might register for the Mapper#beforeDestroy event.

LocalForage Adapter

See js-data-localforage.

LocalStorage Adapter

See js-data-localstorage.

Mapper

See List of JSData Components: Mapper.

Model

An abstraction used to represent data types or entities in your code. It's a heavily overloaded term, so the JSData documentation strives to use more specific terms as much as possible. See Tutorial Step 2: Modeling your data.

MySQL Adapter

See js-data-sql.

ODM

See What is an ORM?.

ORM

See What is an ORM?.

Params

This term is typically used with the js-data-http adapter, is many of its methods take an option called params which should be an object that will be serialized to the URL's querystring.

PostgreSQL Adapter

See js-data-sql.

Query

See List of JSData Components: Query and Query Syntax. query may also be used to refer to the query argument of various methods, such as findAll, filter, updateAll, destroyAll, etc.

Record

See List of JSData Components: Record.

Relations

See Tutorial Step 7: Relations.

Relationships

See Tutorial Step 7: Relations.

RethinkDB Adapter

See js-data-rethinkdb.

REST

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer.

Schema

See List of JSData Components: Schema and Tutorial Part 6: Schemas & Validation.

SimpleStore

See List of JSData Components: SimpleStore.

SQL Adapter

See js-data-sql.

SQLite Adapter

See js-data-sql.

Utils

JSData contains a number of utility methods. You can find them here.

Validation

See Tutorial Part 6: Schemas & Validation.