Repository

Basics

Info

This part of the documentation is written following vuex-orm-next. However, Rattus ORM is more oriented towards working with TypeScript and decorators.

Like Vuex ORM, Rattus ORM supports the "Data Mapper" pattern for interacting with the store. The Data Mapper pattern is one of the traditional implementations of ORM. Using the Data Mapper approach, you define all query methods in separate classes called "repositories", and retrieve, insert, update, and delete objects using these repositories.

In Data Mapper, your models are almost ignorant — they just define their properties and may have some "dummy" methods. Simply put, Data Mapper is an approach to accessing your database in repositories, not in models.

Getting the Repository for a Model

To get a repository, the method of the Database object is used:

const userRepo = db.getRepository(User)
userRepo.save(...)

In the basic implementation of the repository, there are many methods suitable for working with data. You can familiarize yourself with them in the Vuex ORM Next documentation:

Info

Remember that the documentation in the links below is based on Vuex. Replace store.$repo with the result of the getRepository method of the Database object.

1. Retrieving Data
2. Inserting Data
3. Updating Data
4. Deleting Data

Customizing the Repository

If you want to add your own methods to the repository, you can inherit a class from the base implementation. Link it to the model using the use property:

import { Repository } from '@rattus-orm/core'
import Post from '@/models/Post'

export class PostRepository extends Repository<Post> {
  public use = Post
  
  public myMethod() {
    // ...
  }
}

You have two options for using a custom repository. The first is to directly create an instance of it, passing the database to the constructor, and then call the initialize method:

const postRepository = new PostRepository(database).initialize()
postRepository.myMethod()

The second option is to register the repository in the database, so that you automatically get the desired class when calling the getRepository method:

const db = createDatabase({
  dataProvider: new MyDataProvider(),
  connection: 'entities',
  customRepositories: [PostRepository]
}).start()

// or dynamically
database.registerCustomRepository(PostRepository)

const postRepository = db.getRepository<PostRepository>(Post)
postRepository.myMethod()

This will also work with the context (in integrations):

const postRepository = useRattusContext().$repo<PostRepository>(Post)
postRepository.myMethod()

Important (for TypeScript)

The getRepository method in the database and $repo in the context by default return the type Repository<your_model>. Don't forget to pass the type of your repository as a generic argument to the respective method.