serializeAndPush requires jsonapi.version, but spec does not

[joelcox]

Right now the serializeAndPush checks the response for a { jsonapi: { version: * } fragment, even though the JSON API spec says the following:

A JSON:API document MAY include information about its implementation under a top level jsonapi member. If present, the value of the jsonapi member MUST be an object (a “jsonapi object”). The jsonapi object MAY contain a version member whose value is a string indicating the highest JSON API version supported.

My interpretation of this is that serializeAndPush is more strict than it should be, but I do understand this is probably included to inform users that this function is only compatible with a JSON API compliant API. An alternative would be to not return from this function, but just display the warning.

[mike-north]

@iezer this was your code change. Any thoughts as to how this should be handled?

[iezer]

@mike-north I think we should get rid of the isJsonApi(doc) check here and simply do

return ['object', 'array'].indexOf(typeOf((doc as DocWithData).data)) >= 0;

[mike-north]

@iezer that's more generalized than I'm comfortable with. We need to auto-detect things that are definitely JSON:API documents without any false positives (i.e., this serializeAndPush feature should never get in the way, and should clearly announce that specific payload shapes are required if anything looks "off").

If I have a payload

{ 
   "data": [
     "a", "b", "c"
   ]
}

I should get very clear feedback that this can't be used with serializeAndPush.

Maybe update isJsonApi to something like

Payload has a data property, that's either a record or array of records. A record must contain id and type properties of type string, and may contain an attributes property whose value is an object

[iezer]

Ember Data is a likely to also throw an exception if the input is not valid JSON API.

I wonder if there's another function we can use within Ember Data that can call normalizeSingleResponse or normalizeArrayResponse depending on the input, and will work regardless of serialization format. For example if you're using an Active Record-style format with or with a root element (users: [{id: 1, name: 'Bill'}] or [{id: 1, name: 'Bill'}])

[mike-north]

I wonder if there's another function we can use within Ember Data that can call normalizeSingleResponse or normalizeArrayResponse depending on the input, and will work regardless of serialization format.

What you're looking for is normalizeResponse. Depending on the requestType argument that it's passed, it'll look for the payload to contain a single record or array of records. https://github.com/emberjs/data/blob/3dc5976ed5565708ac0813e5c2beb46f31f4d44f/addon/serializers/json.js#L239-L262