Modeling Relationships

Modeling Relationships in Glozic

Glozic offers two primary techniques to model relationships between data:

1. Embedding:

• Subdocuments are directly embedded within a parent document. This approach is ideal for closely related data that is frequently accessed together.
• When you add components like DataGrid or EditGrid to a form, their data is typically stored as embedded subdocuments within the parent document.

2. Referencing:

• A reference (e.g., object ID) to a related document is stored. This is suitable for less tightly coupled relationships where child documents can be accessed independently.

In this tutorial, we will explore how to create a separate collection for subdocuments and establish a has-many relationship between the parent and child collections. This approach provides more flexibility and scalability, especially for large datasets or complex relationships.

Create a Expense Items collection

Create a new collection for Expense Items with below information

Field	Value
Title	Expense Items
Name	expense-items
Description	Expense Items

Creat the Expense Items form with the following form components

• Edge Frame (Layout) img
  • Typography ( Form Expense Item)
  • 6-6 Columns (Layout - Columns)
    • Expense ID (Form - Text Field hidden disabled)
    • Category (Form - Select)
    • Date (Form - Date/Time)
    • Description (Form - Text Field)
    • Amount (Form - Currency)
  • 3-3-6 Columns (Layout - Columns)
    • Close Button (Form - Custom Button)
    • Submit Button (Form - Submit Button)

The form should look similar to below screen capture

Create Belongs-to relationship in Expense Items

Select the Connector icon from the Form Toolset Icons, click Add relation to setup a new model relation. Refer to the below screen capture for proposed values:

Update and Exit from the Expense Items collection design.

Force saving Expense Items to Expense Items collection

Create Expense Items Endpoint

Create an Expense Items endpoint for POSTing of Expense Items to the Expense Items collection. Refer to the table below for proposed values

Field	Value
Title	Expense Items
Name	expense-items
Endpoint URL	https://<tenant>.glozic.dev/<app-name>/endpoint/expense-items
Method	POST
Response Type	JSON
Endpoint Scope	Protected
Description	Create Expense Items

Add the following Variables to the endpoint

Variable	Type	Code
id	JS Expression	return(_var.request.body.id)
expenseItems	JS Expression	return(_var.request.body.expenseItems)

Below screen capture shows an example of the Endpoint settings

Create the following flow

Loop

Field	Value
Source Type	Variable
Variable List	expenseItems
Save response to varialbe	item

If Else

Field	Value
Source Type	Variable
When	{{item._id}}
Operator	is not empty
Save response to varialbe	exists

Collection Operation (False / Left-branch)

Field	Value
Method	Create
Insert Type	Insert One
App	<App Name>
Collection	expense-items
Submission Body

{
 "category": "{{item.category}}",
 "dateTime": "{{dateTime}}",
 "description": "{{item.description}}",
 "amount": "{{item.amount}}",
 "expenseId": "{{id}}"
}

Collection Operation (True / Right-branch)

Field	Value
Method	Update
App	<App Name>
Collection	expense-items
Fetch Record	documentId, {{item._id}}
Submission Body

{
 "category": "{{item.category}}",
 "dateTime": "{{dateTime}}",
 "description": "{{item.description}}",
 "amount": "{{item.amount}}",
 "expenseId": "{{id}}"
}

Save Expense Items to the child collection

Design the Expense collection, go to the Event tab to design the Document added to collection event by drag and drop a Call Web Service action onto the flow designer.

Enter suggested values as shown in the below screen capture

Since the Expense-Items endpoint is a protected endpoint, we will need to add the Authorization header with the following key-value pair as shown in the below screen capture

Note

See the following section on how to get an Access Token

Tips

The above steps's outcome is to trigger the "Document added to collection" event, which it calls the Endpoint to create Expense Items to the Expense Items collection. If you would like to also call the Endpoint to update Expense Items, you will need to do the same as above but call the Endpoint with the Call Web Service action for the "Document being updated" event.

Create Access Token for the restricted endpoint

To generate a personal token for API, go to the settings menu from the Application Dropdown of Studio. Select Personal Token from the SideNav, you should be brought to Personal Access Token console as shown in the below screen capture.

Click Add Token to create a new token, give the personal access token a name and select a validaty duration for the token. You may copy the created token to be used call calling restricted Endpoints created on the Glozic Platform.

Display referenced document property in view

With the Model Relation, the view will auto reference the related document. We're going to modify the Default view of Expense Items to show it's parent document's Expense Number. This is shown in the below screen capture.