how to resolve optional url path using ng-resource - rest

Question

There are restful APIs, for instance:
/players - to get list for all players
/players{/playerName} - to get info for specific player
and I already have a function using ng-resource like:
function Play() {
return $resource('/players');
}
Can I reuse this function for specific player like:
function Play(name) {
return $resource('/players/:name', {
name: name
});
}
so I want to...
send request for /players if I didn't pass name parameter.
send request for /players/someone if I passed name parameter with someone
Otherwise, I have to write another function for specific play?

Answer 1

Using ngResource it's very, very simple (it's basically a two-liner). You don't need even need to create any custom actions here*.
I've posted a working Plunkr here (just open Chrome Developer tools and go to the Network tab to see the results).
Service body:
return $resource('/users/:id/:name', { id:'#id', name: '#name' })
Controller:
function( $scope, Users ){
Users.query(); // GET /users (expects an array)
Users.get({id:2}); // GET /users/2
Users.get({name:'Joe'}); // GET /users/Joe
}
of course, you could, if you really wanted to :)

Answer 2

This is how I did it. This way you don't have to write a custom resource function for each one of your endpoints, you just add it to your list resources list. I defined a list of the endpoints I wanted to use like this.
var constants = {
"serverAddress": "foobar.com/",
"resources": {
"Foo": {
"endpoint": "foo"
},
"Bar": {
"endpoint": "bar"
}
}
}
Then created resources out of each one of them like this.
var service = angular.module('app.services', ['ngResource']);
var resourceObjects = constants.resources;
for (var resourceName in resourceObjects) {
if (resourceObjects.hasOwnProperty(resourceName)) {
addResourceFactoryToService(service, resourceName, resourceObjects[resourceName].endpoint);
}
}
function addResourceFactoryToService (service, resourceName, resourceEndpoint) {
service.factory(resourceName, function($resource) {
return $resource(
constants.serverAddress + resourceEndpoint + '/:id',
{
id: '#id',
},
{
update: {
method: 'PUT',
params: {id: '#id'}
},
}
);
});
}
The nice thing about this is that it takes 2 seconds to add a new endpoint, and I even threw in a put method for you. Then you can inject any of your resources into your controllers like this.
.controller('homeCtrl', function($scope, Foo, Bar) {
$scope.foo = Foo.query();
$scope.bar = Bar.get({id:4});
}

Answer 3

Use Play.query() to find all players
Use Play.get({name:$scope.name}) to find one player