The server sends me a data as JSON to descripe a product. A product consists of properties and nested arrays of properties, up to 4 level deep. In the Frontend the user can update deep nested values. Do I need to keep track of the path an then reconstruct the whole JSON object for my updating POST call? Or is there a more elegant way to do it? Or is the design of the backend service bad?
data as JSON
{
"productId": 10,
"features": [
{
"id": 45,
"name": "Customization",
"productOptions": [
{
"id": 1,
"color": ["red", "green"],
},
{
"id": 2,
"slogans": [
{"id": 32, "name":"Thank You"},
{"id": 33, "name":"Thanks a lot"},
],
}
]
}
]
}
input to edit slogan
<input data-id="32" type="text" name="slogan" />
edit JSON to send back to the server
const update = {"id": 32, "name":"Thank You so much!"}
// update slogan array
solgansUpdateIndex = slogans.findIndex(obj => obj.id == 32)
slogans[solgansUpdateIndex] = update
...
// update whole object for the updating POST call
{...data, //updateTree}
You should not need to send the whole object back to the server. What you should do is send a set of ids that uniquely identify which field should be updated.
Example: Let's take your data where productId is 10 and featureId is 45
You can create a controller in the backend such as updateProductSlogan(int productId, int featureId, int sloganId, String/Slogan newSlogan).
And then what this endpoint should do is get the corresponding slogan from your database with a query, using these ids and update that slogan with value of newSlogan param.
Note: If only field that contains slogans is the features field you can also hardcode that and change the method to updateProductSlogan(int productId, int sloganId, String/Slogan newSlogan). in which you will fetch the features property with no need to use an id for.
I also want to echo my previous comment that, when working with any JSON, you always (1) decode the JSON string into a data structure; (2) work with that data structure (not the string); and if necessary (3) encode the data structure back into a string.
You should never attempt to manipulate the string "as a string." Treat the JSON content as a black box and trust the "magic encoder/decoder ring" to always do the right thing. JSON is an international data standard with known-good encoder/decoder libraries that everyone uses.
The same principle is true for XML, YAML, or any other such string-encoding method. "It's a black box."