Links (relations) to REST resources in AngularJS

Question

I have a REST API, which returns User object, where its roles are specified via link to another object. So at localhost/project/api/users/27/ is JSON object:

{
    "id": 42,
    "name": "John",
    "prijmeni": "Doe",
    "login": "johndoe",
    "nickname": null,
    "grade": 1.3,
    "roles": {
        "href": "http://localhost/project/api/users/1716/roles/"
    }
}

What I'm trying to do is to get roles in controller. My User service looks like this:

projectServices.factory('User', ['$resource', 'UserRoles',
    function($resource, UserRoles, Role) {
        var User = $resource('http://localhost/project/api/users/:id', {}, {
            'query': {
                method: 'GET',
                isArray: true
            }
        });
        return User;
    }
]);

and I tried to add (to that resource code block):

User.prototype.roles= function(){
   return UserRoles.get({id:42});
};

this one freezes browser when called in ngRepeat. So I tried

User.prototype.roles = UserRoles.get({id:42});

this works. Then I tried

User.prototype.roles = $resource(this.roles.href, {}, {
   'get': {
      method: 'GET',
      isArray: true
   }
});

says, that roles is undefined. I also tried to add transformResponse param to User service GET action, but that function was never called.

The second option works just perfectly fine - except, that I have to hardcode the user ID. Suitable solution would be with somehow getting the user ID for me (i tried this.id, but that didn't work).

Perfect solution would be creating resource from given href, but as I can't access roles in prototype, I don't know how.

Thanks for any advice.

Answer 1

This should do the trick

projectServices.factory('UserRoles', function(){
    return $resource('http://localhost/project/api/users/:id', {id: @id}, 
        {'query': {
            method: 'GET',
            isArray: true
        })
}

Now you can call it with

UserRoles.get({id:42})  
// this makes the request :     http://localhost/project/api/users/42

The @id tells angular to use the id key from the parameter passed.