Deep defaults

We’re currently in the process of migrating from mongoose to papr. Here’s a question that I have: Say I have schema for users collection:

const userSchema = schema(
  {
    numPosts: types.number(),

    emailPreferences: types.object({
      monthly: types.boolean(),
      newsletter: types.boolean(),
      followers: types.boolean(),
    }),

    appreciations: types.array(types.object({
      badge: types.objectId(),
      count: types.number(),
    })),
  },
  {
    defaults: {
      numPosts: 0,
      
      emailPreferences: {
        monthly: true,
        newsletter: true,
        followers: true,
      },

     appreciations: [
        {
          count: 0
        }
      ],
    }
  }
)

As you can see, I have 3 root fields in this schema: numPosts, emailPreferences, and appreciations. I use papr’s default functionality for all 3.

For numPosts, it’s straight forward. As for emailPreferences, what happens when I try to insert an object that only has one field defined ? will papr merge that with the defaults of the 2 remaining fields ?

EDIT: The answer is no. It will not be merged w/ the other defaults. When I tried the following insert:

UserModel.insertOne({
        name: "dsafnaisdhfujabsf1",
        email: "[e-mail]",
        username: "dsafnaisdhfujabsf1",
        emailPreferences: {
          newsletter: false,
        },
      });

The resulting document only included newsletter: false:

...
emailPreferences: { newsletter: false },

This is not ideal. The expected behaviour here is that it should merge the one field I defined with other undefined fields from the defaults object.

And as for appreciations, how do I represent defaults for an array of objects ? is this the correct way ? What would happen if I try to insert this document without appreciations field ? will it insert just the count field ?

EDIT: the answer is yes. Papr is going to insert an array that contains: appreciations: [{ count: 0 }] by default. The expected behaviour here is that these defaults are only used when I try to insert an array. How do I achieve this ?

Does Papr allow me to use nested schemas ? EDIT: the answer is no. Papr models will work, but they will not make use of the nested schema.

Overall, I think the current API for defaults in papr is really limited and confusing. I believe defaults shouldn’t be in a separate object. They should be included in the type definitions themselves. Which is the case in mongoose and ts-mongoose:

newsletter: Type.boolean({ default: false })

Is such a change possible/planned ? And if not, how can I achieve the same capabilities for defining defaults using Papr ?

Thanks a lot for your amazing package.

[avaly]

I’m OOO now, but I saw this thread and wanted to comment.

Regarding your last comment about the API resembling the ts-mongoose one, I remember that was an initial implementation of our first version of papr, before we open sourced it. But we had to move away from that API, because we need the defaults type as a generic type as well at the top level of a Model in order to use it in certain methods like insertOne, etc.

If you can make this API change, and keep all the existing functionality in the tests, we’re more than happy to consider such a change.

[BahaaZidan]

@ejmartin504 From an API standpoint, I think the defaults API of ts-mongoose (may she rest in piece) is a good place to be at.

const userSchema = schema(
  {
    appreciations: types.array(types.object({
      badge: types.objectId(),
      count: types.number({ default: 0 }),
    }), { default: [] }),
  }
)

What do you think about this ?