parseModels

Use

can.Model.parseModels(data, xhr) is used to convert the raw response of a findAll request into an object or Array that models can use to create a can.Model.List of model instances.

This method is never called directly. Instead the deferred returned by findAll is piped into parseModels and the result of that is sent to models.

If your server is returning data in non-standard way, overwriting can.Model.parseModels is the best way to normalize it.

Expected data format

By default, models expects data to be an array of name-value pair objects like:

[{id: 1, name : "dishes"},{id:2, name: "laundry"}, ...]

It can also take an object with additional data about the array like:

{
 count: 15000 //how many total items there might be
 data: [{id: 1, name : "justin"},{id:2, name: "brian"}, ...]
}

In this case, models will return a can.Model.List of instances found in data, but with additional properties as expandos on the list:

var tasks = Task.models({
 count : 1500,
 data : [{id: 1, name: 'dishes'}, ...]
})
tasks.attr("name") // -> 'dishes'
tasks.count // -> 1500

If your data does not look like one of these formats, overwrite parseModels.

Overwriting parseModels

If your service returns data like:

{ thingsToDo: [{name: "dishes", id: 5}] }

You will want to overwrite parseModels to pass the models what it expects like:

Task = can.Model.extend({
 parseModels: function(data){
   return data.thingsToDo;
 }
},{});

You could also do this like:

Task = can.Model.extend({
 parseModels: "thingsToDo"
},{});

can.Model.models passes each instance's data to can.Model.model to create the individual instances.