• Introduction
• Usage
• create
• delete
• retrieve
• update
• Properties
• cidPrefix
• destroy
• fetch
• generateCid
• has
• idAttribute
• initialize
• isNew
• parse
• save
• set
• sync
• toJSON
• url
• urlRoot
• validate
• validationError
• Utils
• Custom Properties
• Extending
• Misc
• History

initialize

The initialize() method is called at the end of model instantiation, and is useful for storing data that other methods will need.

Default Implementation

The default implementation looks like this:

initialize: function(attributes, options) {
  // does nothing
},

Usage

A common use for this method is storing variables that will be needed to construct nested URLs.

Many REST API endpoints have flat URLs, like /tweets or /users. But some APIs require you to use a nested URL structure like /users/1/tweets/1 when fetching or updating data.

The code below shows how you can use initialize() to accomplish this:

import { Model } from 'lore-models';

const Tweet = Model.extend({
  urlRoot: 'http://localhost:1337',

  initialize: function(attributes, options){
    this.user = options.user;
  },

  url: function() {
    return `${this.urlRoot}/users/${this.user}/tweets/${this.attributes.id}`
  }
})

const tweet = new Tweet({
  id: 1
}, {
  user: 1
})

tweet.fetch()

In the code above, we're providing a second argument to new Tweet(), and that additional information is passed to initialize() as options, where we save the id for the user.

Then we override the url() function to compose the final nested URL using the user, along with the id of the tweet.

When we call tweet.fetch() it will make an API call to http://localhost:1337/users/1/tweets/1, and you can confirm the url it will use by calling tweet.url().