Attaching custom behavior to Ember changesets

Recently I’ve encountered a very interesting case: I wanted to re-use a model’s computed properties on the changeset so when new values were assigned, derived values were immediately updated.

Computed properties had to be attached to the changeset (even though they were already defined on the model) because changes are not propagated to the model until they are valid during changeset.execute() call (which is used under the hood by changeset.save() ).

Here is short code sample presenting how it was supposed to work:

changeset . set ( ' items:fistObject ' ). set ( ' taxRate ' , newValue ); changeset . get ( ' subTotals ' )

subtotals was a computed property based on the items attribute. It simply grouped them based on taxRate field and passed to a new Subtotal instance:

subTotals : computed ( ' items.[] ' , ' [email protected] ' , function () { const taxRates = this . get ( ' items ' ). mapBy ( ' taxRate ' ). uniq (); return taxRates . map (( taxRate ) => { const items = this . get ( ' items ' ). filterBy ( ' taxRate ' , taxRate ); return Subtotal . create ({ items , taxRate }); }); });

Here is how I attached my mixin to the changeset instance:

import Component from ' @ember/component ' ; import lookupValidator from ' ember-changeset-validations ' ; import { action } from ' @ember-decorators/object ' ; import { changeset } from ' ember-changeset ' ; ... export default class InvoiceFormComponent extends Component { @ computed ( ' invoice ' ) get changeset () { let Changeset = changeset ( this . invoice , lookupValidator ( InvoiceValidation ), InvoiceValidation ); Changeset . reopen ( InvoiceDecorator ); return Changeset . create (); } }

I used changeset factory function which generate a Changeset class. Then I reopened it to include my mixin. Once my Changeset class was fully defined, I simply initialized a new instance.

Unfortunately I encountered another problem - model.items was actually a computed property (derived from itemsAttributes field):

import Mixin from ' @ember/object/mixin ' ; import { computed } from ' @ember/object ' ; export default Mixin . create ({ items : computed ( ' [email protected] ' , function () { return ( this . get ( ' itemsAttributes ' ) || []). map (( attrs ) => Item . create ( attrs )); }), subTotals : computed ( ' items.[] ' , ' [email protected] ' , function () { const taxRates = this . get ( ' items ' ). mapBy ( ' taxRate ' ). uniq (); return taxRates . map (( taxRate ) => { const items = this . get ( ' items ' ). filterBy ( ' taxRateCode ' , taxRate . code ); return Subtotal . create ({ items , taxRate }); }); }) });

So the last remaining piece was to propagate changes on items in the changeset to itemsAttributes on the model. It actually turned out to be as simple as overriding execute function on the changeset:

Changeset . reopen ({ execute () { this . set ( ' itemsAttributes ' , this . get ( ' items ' ). invoke ( ' toJSON ' )); return this . _super (); } });

Now when I called changeset.save() , changes in the Items were correctly propagated to the model.itemsItributes and then via computed property to the model.items .

Here is the full code for my custom changeset:

let Changeset = changeset ( this . invoice , lookupValidator ( InvoiceValidation ), InvoiceValidation ); Changeset . reopen ( InvoiceDecorator ); Changeset . reopen ({ execute () { this . set ( ' itemsAttributes ' , this . get ( ' items ' ). invoke ( ' toJSON ' )); return this . _super (); } }); return Changeset . create ();

Credits to jwwweber for checking spelling errors and overall content of the article.