Provide some Documentation

[iz-iznogood]

Hi this is an extremely interesting project !!!! Would it be possible to to add some documentation explaining the implemented features and what's still missing/todo ?

Also there are these pages
http://breeze.github.io/doc-net/odata.html
http://breeze.github.io/doc-js/server-odata.html
http://breeze.github.io/doc-net/odata-vs-webapi.html
that relate to oData support and clearly mention issues with oData4. What is the status regarding these issues ?

Thanks

[tschettler]

Hey, thanks for your interest! Yes I plan to add documentation around features/usage soon. Most of the OData 4 issues discussed by the breeze authors are related to Microsoft's implementation of OData 4, which of course are irrelevant to the client.

Briefly though, the following are supported:

• Everything breeze already supports with OData 3!
• Parsing annotations from metadata
  • Namespace.StoreGeneratedPattern - used for determining AutoGeneratedKeyType
  • Namespace.DisplayName - used for property.displayName
  • Namespace.Custom.* - used for property.custom
  • Namespace.Validator.ValidatorName[.ValidatorProperty] - used for providing validation rules
• OData 4 actions and functions
• OData 4 URL conventions (work in progress)

My current todo list:

• Usage documentation
• Unit testing
• Better method of building requests for actions and functions
• Support for standard OData vocabularies

Any advanced querying that OData 4 allows can be accomplished by using breeze's pass-thru/literal predicate syntax. There are also some inherent breeze limitations, such as the inability to add missing query functions (Breeze/breeze.js#202) and allowing property paths with the derived type (Breeze/breeze.js#195), the latter of which is a feature of OData as of version 3.

If there's anything else you are specifically looking to do with OData 4, please let me know.

Thanks!

[iz-iznogood]

Hi thanks this is helpful.

So any normal breeze query is supported I guess, but was about save charges?
Can you provide some insight on this ? Are batch saves implement? Are there any limitations? What about transactions and save order? From what I have read, batch saves are implemented using multiple requests. Is this the case with your implementation ? Is your implementation supporting db transactions?

Thanks

[tschettler]

Batch saving is implemented for save changes. To the client, a save request is the transaction. This library has no understanding of server-side save order, transactions, or databases. However, I have considered possibly splitting - or ordering - the changesets in the batch based on dependencies, but that quickly becomes complicated.

Batch saves use a single HTTP POST request, with the body being a multipart content type representing each individual request that should be performed on the server. Processing the batch request is left up to the server implementation. If you are looking for a method to use database transactions, you may also consider using an OData action.

See also: Responding to a Batch Request

[iz-iznogood]

Hi, thanks for the info.
I guess if you provide a simple client - server example all will be clear.

I believe it is also important to mention the server side setup, should the controllers inherit from ApiController or ODataController ? What about the BreezeController attribute ?

Sorry for all those questions, if you can provide a basic example all will be clear.

Thanks and sorry again

[tschettler]

The server-side controllers should inherit from ODataController. I will try to work on an sample client and server. In the meantime, this should get you started:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/web-api/overview/odata-support-in-aspnet-web-api/odata-v4/create-an-odata-v4-endpoint