$populate enhancement

[evgenyboxer]

Hey,

I really like using $populate (sometimes, I prefer that over the populate hook).
One downside I found is that I couldn't pass multiple populate statements.

Here's how you could query:

query: {
  $populate: {
    children: [
      { path: 'colA', populate: { path: 'fieldA' } },
      { path: 'colB', populate: { path: 'fieldB' } },
    ],
  },
},

and the service could look like:

// Handle $populate
if (filters.$populate) {
  if (filters.$populate.children) {
    filters.$populate.children.forEach((populate) => q.populate(populate));
  } else {
    q.populate(filters.$populate);
  }
}

Thoughts on this?

[marshallswain]

@evgenyboxer Good idea! Why not use an array directly?

query: {
  $populate: [
    { path: 'colA', populate: { path: 'fieldA' } },
    { path: 'colB', populate: { path: 'fieldB' } },
  ]
},

and

// Handle $populate
if (filters.$populate) {
  if (Array.isArray(filters.$populate)) {
    filters.$populate.forEach((populate) => q.populate(populate));
  } else {
    q.populate(filters.$populate);
  }
}

Would that work?

[olaferlandsen]

@evgenyboxer Good idea! Why not use an array directly?

query: {
  $populate: [
    { path: 'colA', populate: { path: 'fieldA' } },
    { path: 'colB', populate: { path: 'fieldB' } },
  ]
},

and

// Handle $populate
if (filters.$populate) {
  if (Array.isArray(filters.$populate)) {
    filters.$populate.forEach((populate) => q.populate(populate));
  } else {
    q.populate(filters.$populate);
  }
}

Would that work?

Can you give me a full example of this?
I need allow sub-populate like:

{
    $populate: [
        {
            path: "author",
            populate: [{path: "image"}]
        }
    ]
}