how to get Ember-Data RESTAdapter to send “hasMany” records to server

Question

I'm using Ember-Data beta 3. My Ds.models are similar to the following:

App.Item = DS.Model.extend({
  itemName: DS.attr('string'),
  strategy: DS.belongsTo('strat')
});

App.Strat = DS.Model.extend({
    stratName: DS.attr('string'),
    items: DS.hasMany('item',{async:true})
});

Using Ember-data's RESTAdapter, I'm able to populate the model using data from my server. But when I tried to persist data back to the server, none of the "App.Item" records got sent. The JSON received by my server only contained "stratName." I used "this.get('model').save()" to trigger the send.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Is there a reason why you are using an async relationship between your models?

If you set them as {embedded: always}, you can easily override the serializeHasMany function to include all of your related model information

serializeHasMany: function(record, json, relationship) {
    var hasManyRecords, key;
    key = relationship.key;
    hasManyRecords = Ember.get(record, key);
    if (hasManyRecords && relationship.options.embedded === "always") {
        json[key] = [];
        hasManyRecords.forEach(function(item, index) {
            // use includeId: true if you want the id of each model on the hasMany relationship
            json[key].push(item.serialize({ includeId: true }));
        });
    } else {
        this._super(record, json, relationship);
    }
},

Answer 2

You aren't doing anything wrong, save only saves that particular record.

However, it should be sending up the ids of the associated items, is that not happening?

Answer 3

You got to overwrite serializeHasMany in your adapter and use this adapter for model or an application, here is a coffescript example:

App.LMSSerializer = App.ApplicationSerializer.extend

  serializeHasMany: (record, json, relationship) ->
    key = relationship.key
    jsonKey = Ember.String.singularize(key) + '_ids'

    json[jsonKey] = []

    record.get(key).forEach( (item) ->
      json[jsonKey].push(item.get('id'))
    )
    return json