Substance Data

With Substance.Data you can model your domain data using a simple graph-based object model that can be serialized to JSON. It's easy to manipulate and query data on the client (browser) or on the server (Node.js) by using exactly the same API.

Getting started

Start with a schema.

var schema = {
  "person": {
    "type": "person",
    "name": "Person",
    "properties": {
      "name": "string",
      "origin": "location"
    }
  },
  "location": {
    "type": "location",
    "name": "Location",
    "properties": {
      "name": "string",
      "citizens": ["array", "person"]
    }
  }
};

Create a new Data.Graph.

var graph = new Data.Graph(schema);

Add some objects.

graph.create({
  id: "bart",
  type: "person",
  name: "Bart Simpson"
});

graph.set({
  id: "springfield",
  name: "Springfield",
  type: "location",
  citizens: ["bart"]
});

Set properties.

graph.set(["bart", "origin"], "springfield");

Querying is easy too. With get you can either look up a node by id or specify a path that is used to traverse the graph.

// Return a node
graph.get('bart');
// => {
  id: "bart",
  type: "person",
  name: "Bart Simpson",
  "location": "springfield"
}

// Return a property
graph.get(["springfield", "citizens"]);
// => ["springfield"]

You can even do smart querying and have the correct objects returned instead of ids.

// Return a property
graph.query(["springfield", "citizens"]);
// => [{id: "springfield", type: "location", citizens: ["bart"]}]

TODO:

• Incremental updates using operations
• Versioned graph (undo redo)
• Persistence
• Replication (not yet ready)

This was just an appetizer. To get an overview of the full API please have a look at our commented testsuite.