Employee resource¶

Last resource in this tutorial with two new features: PATCH support and sub-resources.

Let’s start with PATCH support; if you have read the HTTP to scala method mapping in Play’R basics, it’s just a matter of implementing the ResourceUpdate trait and provide an implementation for the update method.

object EmployeeController extends RestReadController[Employee]
                             with ResourceCreate
                             with ResourceDelete
                             with ResourceUpdate {
  ...
  def update(employee: Employee) = Action { ... }
  ...
}

To simplify the common case of a resource with read, create, delete and update traits there is a shortcut trait:

object EmployeeController extends RestRwdController[Employee] {
  ...
}

Next, an employee is just a link between a person and a company, and in itself, an employee resource does not exists without a company.

In controller terms, it means that our EmployeeController depends on a Company resource instance.

So, we will rewrite our controller as a case class that takes a Company as parameter.

All methods in our controller will then have access to the matching Company.

case class EmployeeController(company: Company) extends RestRwdController[Employee]{
  ...
  def fromId(sid: String) = toInt(sid).flatMap(id => EmployeeContainer.get(id))

  def list = Action { Ok(Json.toJson(EmployeeContainer.filterList(_.companyId==company.id))) }
  ...
}

All methods are implemented like in the other controller, except they can use the given Company object to retrieve information, like the list method that filters employees based on the company’s id.

The last step is to explain to the router how we will access those employees and how to create new EmployeeController instances.

In URL terms, we will have access the employee list for company 1 through: /crm/company/1/employee; and the employee with id 2 through: /crm/company/1/employee/2

To create new controller instances, it’s just a method that for a Company instance gives an EmployeeController instance:

...
val crmApi = RestApiRouter()
  .add(PersonController)
  .add(new RestResourceRouter(CompanyController)

    .add("employee", company => EmployeeController(company))

    .add("functions", GET, CompanyController.functions _)
  )
 ...