Updating association in Sails - sails.js

Question

I am using SailsJs. Two models exist. Model 'person' contains the following attribute:
books: {
collection: 'book',
via: 'owner'
},
Model 'book' contains:
owner: {
model: 'person'
},
When I create an instance of person, I can use http request and simply put something like the following
Post /person?books=1001,1002
As long as 1001 and 1002 are valid ids of book, it works.
However, when I try to person's books attribute, this does not work
Post /person/1?books=1002,1003
books of person with id 1 becomes empty.
But,
Post /person/1?books=1002
would work.
Why is this? How can I modify collection attribute?

Answer 1

There are 2 options to update a model using the blueprints API:
Send the data as the body of the post request. send the data as a json object in the request body
Post /person/1
body: { "books": [1002,1003]}
Override the blueprint update method
Add this the PersonController.js:
update: function (req, res) {
Person.findOne(req.param('id')).populate('books').exec(function (err, person){
if (err) {
sails.log.error(err);
return;
}
var books = req.param('books').split(',').map(function (book){return parseInt(book);}),
booksToRemove = _.difference(person.books.map(function(book) {return book.id;}), books);
// Remove books that are not in the requested list
person.books.remove(booksToRemove);
// Add new books to the list
person.books.add(books);
person.save(function (err, r) {;
res.json(r);
});
});
}