5 ms·

Stabilizing Ember Data

71 points by duggieawesome 14y ago

avolcano 14y ago
Ember Data can be really powerful, but is even far worse in the "black box of magic" department than Ember itself. There's a lot of crazy internal state and logic being fired off in all directions, and it can lead to very strange state errors and race conditions. I'm really glad to hear that they're adding an adapter type that can be more powerful than just an $.ajax call while not being quite as complex. It was by far my biggest complaint with Ember. (of course, I hope this doesn't stifle development of more full-featured adapters - I think half my problems with Ember Data come from the LocalStorage adapter I'm using having some major issues ;p)
- 1qaz2wsx3edc 14y ago
  I think a big chunk of magic in Ember is its state machines. I think without explaining this core-mechanics and how it's used by ember and ember data. Beginners will have a terrible time learning the framework. Not only this, but you're exactly right you end up in weird unresolved states, due to bugs, race conditions and a like. Not fun. Also ember should try and move away from calling itself an MVC, it's much more complex then that. I think this mis-categorization confused new users as well. I feel ember has a lot of broken promises, but I will continue to hold judgement until a solid 1.0 release.
pdog 14y ago
The Ember team has been remarkably responsive to what's trending[1][2]. [1]: http://discuss.emberjs.com/t/getting-started-with-ember-js-is-easy-no-it-isn-t/559 http://discuss.emberjs.com/t/getting-started-with-ember-js-i... [2]: https://errplane.com/blog/why-we-are-moving-away-from-emberjs https://errplane.com/blog/why-we-are-moving-away-from-emberj... [3]: http://emberjs.com/blog/2013/03/21/making-ember-easier.html http://emberjs.com/blog/2013/03/21/making-ember-easier.html
- jeffpersonified 14y ago
  Agreed. I think it says a lot about Tom Dale and co., and have been really impressed with their responses in aggregate – it's probably been a long week for the Ember team.
- aneth4 14y ago
  Yes, possibly enough to fight off the bad press even. Without such an initiative, I was afraid their hard work would fade into obscurity.
adamnemecek 14y ago
For what's it's worth, I've had a very similar experience to what most people described (tried Ember in August '12 and after struggling with it for some time, gave up). But the Ember team's recent efforts have made consider giving it another look. Keep it up.
anonfunction 14y ago
Strong conventions you say? Stop reinventing the wheel and build on top of REST. That would allow developers to define a resource and then have access to GET, POST, PUT, DELETE through an easy to use API.
- spellboots 14y ago
  Ember data is built on top of REST.
  - anonfunction 14y ago
    That's good to know... though in my hasty research I didn't see anything that said so. That should be a big selling point. https://github.com/emberjs/data https://github.com/emberjs/data
    - MrMcDowall 14y ago
      I've submitted a PR to em-data which should make the REST support a bit more clear. https://github.com/emberjs/data/pull/834 https://github.com/emberjs/data/pull/834
- tomdale 14y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion! In fact, you've just described exactly what we're building. We are big fans of REST, and if you read the documentation, you'll see that the default behavior of Ember Data is to transmit RESTful JSON[1]. In addition, we've been working with a bunch of really smart Rails people like Steve Klabnik and Santiago Pastorino on projects like ActiveModel::Serializers[2] and rails-api[3]. That being said, we know that there are a lot of different ways to serialize and transmit records, so we've designed the architecture of Ember Data such that those decisions are encapsulated in specific objects which we call adapters. You can think of it like the adapters for different databases for ORMs like ActiveRecord. The default adapter, though, is RESTful JSON, and is what we use in all of our applications. You can see the implementation on GitHub[4]. 1: http://emberjs.com/guides/models/the-rest-adapter/ http://emberjs.com/guides/models/the-rest-adapter/ 2: https://github.com/rails-api/active_model_serializers https://github.com/rails-api/active_model_serializers 3: https://github.com/rails-api/rails-api https://github.com/rails-api/rails-api 4: https://github.com/emberjs/data/blob/master/packages/ember-data/lib/adapters/rest_adapter.js https://github.com/emberjs/data/blob/master/packages/ember-d...
zaius 14y ago
I think this is a great idea. Ember-data is powerful, but it's still very unpolished, and there are a lot of hard problems left to solve. I don't think it should be rushed just because ember is now close to v1.
calgaryeng 14y ago
People really need to stop ragging on the Ember team... "Too hard to learn", "I'm abandoning it for now", etc. etc. etc. These guys are making a (potentially) awesome framework in the spirit of open source, for you, for free. If you want to complain, start your own framework! I honestly admire their patience for putting something amazing out there, and then having to continuously write these almost apologetic blog posts talking about how they are going to work hard to make things better.
- kaoD 14y ago
  > If you want to complain, start your own framework! God no! Not another framework!
jjellyy 14y ago
I have alot of experience with backbone, and I would highly recommend it to anyone. Why would anyone pick ember over backbone?
- jeffpersonified 14y ago
  I've really loved using Backbone myself, and have very limited (simple, sample apps) with Ember. Ember comes with stronger conventions than backbone, giving one a fuller out-of-the-box application, which for some people and projects is more preferable. I think, like many people have said, they're each intended for different use cases.

71 points by duggieawesome 14y ago

Ember Data can be really powerful, but is even far worse in the "black box of magic" department than Ember itself. There's a lot of crazy internal state and logic being fired off in all directions, and it can lead to very strange state errors and race conditions. I'm really glad to hear that they're adding an adapter type that can be more powerful than just an $.ajax call while not being quite as complex. It was by far my biggest complaint with Ember. (of course, I hope this doesn't stifle development of more full-featured adapters - I think half my problems with Ember Data come from the LocalStorage adapter I'm using having some major issues ;p)

1qaz2wsx3edc 14y ago
I think a big chunk of magic in Ember is its state machines. I think without explaining this core-mechanics and how it's used by ember and ember data. Beginners will have a terrible time learning the framework. Not only this, but you're exactly right you end up in weird unresolved states, due to bugs, race conditions and a like. Not fun. Also ember should try and move away from calling itself an MVC, it's much more complex then that. I think this mis-categorization confused new users as well. I feel ember has a lot of broken promises, but I will continue to hold judgement until a solid 1.0 release.

pdog 14y ago

The Ember team has been remarkably responsive to what's trending[1][2]. [1]: http://discuss.emberjs.com/t/getting-started-with-ember-js-is-easy-no-it-isn-t/559 http://discuss.emberjs.com/t/getting-started-with-ember-js-i... [2]: https://errplane.com/blog/why-we-are-moving-away-from-emberjs https://errplane.com/blog/why-we-are-moving-away-from-emberj... [3]: http://emberjs.com/blog/2013/03/21/making-ember-easier.html http://emberjs.com/blog/2013/03/21/making-ember-easier.html

jeffpersonified 14y ago
Agreed. I think it says a lot about Tom Dale and co., and have been really impressed with their responses in aggregate – it's probably been a long week for the Ember team.
aneth4 14y ago
Yes, possibly enough to fight off the bad press even. Without such an initiative, I was afraid their hard work would fade into obscurity.

adamnemecek 14y ago

For what's it's worth, I've had a very similar experience to what most people described (tried Ember in August '12 and after struggling with it for some time, gave up). But the Ember team's recent efforts have made consider giving it another look. Keep it up.

anonfunction 14y ago

Strong conventions you say? Stop reinventing the wheel and build on top of REST. That would allow developers to define a resource and then have access to GET, POST, PUT, DELETE through an easy to use API.

spellboots 14y ago
Ember data is built on top of REST.
- anonfunction 14y ago
  That's good to know... though in my hasty research I didn't see anything that said so. That should be a big selling point. https://github.com/emberjs/data https://github.com/emberjs/data
  - MrMcDowall 14y ago
    I've submitted a PR to em-data which should make the REST support a bit more clear. https://github.com/emberjs/data/pull/834 https://github.com/emberjs/data/pull/834
tomdale 14y ago
Thanks for the suggestion! In fact, you've just described exactly what we're building. We are big fans of REST, and if you read the documentation, you'll see that the default behavior of Ember Data is to transmit RESTful JSON[1]. In addition, we've been working with a bunch of really smart Rails people like Steve Klabnik and Santiago Pastorino on projects like ActiveModel::Serializers[2] and rails-api[3]. That being said, we know that there are a lot of different ways to serialize and transmit records, so we've designed the architecture of Ember Data such that those decisions are encapsulated in specific objects which we call adapters. You can think of it like the adapters for different databases for ORMs like ActiveRecord. The default adapter, though, is RESTful JSON, and is what we use in all of our applications. You can see the implementation on GitHub[4]. 1: http://emberjs.com/guides/models/the-rest-adapter/ http://emberjs.com/guides/models/the-rest-adapter/ 2: https://github.com/rails-api/active_model_serializers https://github.com/rails-api/active_model_serializers 3: https://github.com/rails-api/rails-api https://github.com/rails-api/rails-api 4: https://github.com/emberjs/data/blob/master/packages/ember-data/lib/adapters/rest_adapter.js https://github.com/emberjs/data/blob/master/packages/ember-d...

zaius 14y ago

I think this is a great idea. Ember-data is powerful, but it's still very unpolished, and there are a lot of hard problems left to solve. I don't think it should be rushed just because ember is now close to v1.

calgaryeng 14y ago

People really need to stop ragging on the Ember team... "Too hard to learn", "I'm abandoning it for now", etc. etc. etc. These guys are making a (potentially) awesome framework in the spirit of open source, for you, for free. If you want to complain, start your own framework! I honestly admire their patience for putting something amazing out there, and then having to continuously write these almost apologetic blog posts talking about how they are going to work hard to make things better.

kaoD 14y ago
> If you want to complain, start your own framework! God no! Not another framework!

jjellyy 14y ago

I have alot of experience with backbone, and I would highly recommend it to anyone. Why would anyone pick ember over backbone?

jeffpersonified 14y ago
I've really loved using Backbone myself, and have very limited (simple, sample apps) with Ember. Ember comes with stronger conventions than backbone, giving one a fuller out-of-the-box application, which for some people and projects is more preferable. I think, like many people have said, they're each intended for different use cases.