OrientJS Database API

Once you have initialized the Server API, you can begin to interact with the databases on the OrientDB Server. In your code, this starts with initializing a database instance for your application, which is managed through the OrientJS Database API.

By convention, the variable on which you initialize the Database API is called db. This designation is arbitrary and used only for convenience.

Initializing the Database API

In order to work with an OrientDB database in your Node.js application, you need to initialize an instance of the Database API. This provides your application with the tools it needs to access, manipulate and otherwise interact with specific databases. The initialization process is handled through the Server API, which is here called server, by convention.

For instance, with an existing database,

var db = server.use('BaseballStats')
console.log('Using Database:'  + db.name);

Using this code, your application would attempt to connect to the BaseballStats database. When it succeeds, it logs a message to the console to tell the user which database they're on.

When you're done with the database, be sure to close the instance,

db.close();

Using Credentials

In the above example, the Database API attempts to load the database using the default credentials, that is the admin user with the password admin. That's fine for a database that collects baseball statistics, but may prove problematic in the event that you want to store sensitive information. You can pass additional objects to the server.use() method to use credentials when you initialize the database instance.

var db = server.use({
   name:     'SmartHomeData',
   username:     'smarthome_user',
   password: 'smarthome_passwd'
});

Here, you have a database for logging information from various smart home devices. By passing in the user and password arguments, you can now use application specific credentials when interacting with the database. This allows you to implement better security practices on the database, (for instance, by restricting what smarthome_user can do).

Using Standalone Databases

Beginning in version 2.1.11 of OrientJS, you can initialize a database instance without needing to connect to the OrientDB Server. This is managed through the ODatabase class.

For instance, here the application connects to the GratefulDeadConcerts database and queries the vertex class, returns its length, then closes the database instance.

var ODatabase = require('orientjs').ODatabase;
var db = new ODatabase({
   host:     'localhost',
   port:     2424,
   username: 'admin',
   password: 'admin',
   name:     'GratefulDeadCocnerts'
});

db.open().then(function() {
   return db.query('SELECT FROM V LIMIT 1');
}).then(function(res){
   console.log(res.length);
   db.close().then(function(){
      console.log('closed');
   });
});

Working with Databases

Methods are tied to the variable you initialize the Database API to: db.<method>. These can also be used to define and call other API's in the OrientJS driver.

Using the Record API

Methods tied to the Record API are called through the db.record object. These methods allow you to access and manipulate records directly through the Record ID. For instance, say you want to get the data from the record #1:1:

var rec = db.record.get('#1:1');

For more information on the Record API and other methods available, see Record API.

Using the Class API

Methods tied to the Class API are called through the db.class object. These methods allow you to create, access and manipulate classes directly through their class names. For instance, say you wanted to create a class in a baseball database for players,

var Player = db.class.create('Player', 'V');

For more information on the Class API and other methods available, see Class API.

Using the Index API

Methods tied to the Index API are called through the db.index object. These methods allow you to create and fetch index properties for a given class. For instance, say you want create an index on the Player class in your baseball database for the players' names,

var indexName = db.index.create({
   name: 'Player.name',
   type: 'fulltext'
});

For more information on the Index API and other methods, see Index API. For more information on indices in general, see Indexes.

Using the Function API

Using the Database API, you can access the Function API through the db.createFn() method. This allows you to create custom functions to operate on your data. For instance, in the example of a database for baseball statistics, you might want a function to calculate a player's batting average.

db.createFn("batAvg", function(hits, atBats){
   return hits / atBats;
});

For more information, see Function API.

Querying the Database

Unlike the above operations, querying the database does not require that you call a dedicated API. You can call these methods on the Database API directly, without setting or defining an additional object, using the db.query() method.

The db.query method executes an SQL query against the opened database. You can either define these values directly in SQL, or define arbitrary parameters through additional arguments.

For instance, using the baseball database, say that you want to allow users to retrieve statistical information on players. They provide the parameters and your application sorts and displays the results.

var targetAvg = 0.3;
var targetTeam = 'Red Sox';

var hitters = db.query(
   'SELECT name, battavg FROM Player WHERE battavg >= :ba AND team = :team',
   {params: {
      ba: targetAvg,
      team: targetTeam
    },limit: 20 }
).then(
   function(players){
      console.log(players);
   }
);

Here, the variables targetAvg and targetTeam are defined at the start, then the query is run against the Player class for Red Sox players with batting averages greater than or equal to .300, printing the return value to the console.

There are a number of more specialized query related methods supported by the Database API. For more information, see the Query guide.

Transactions

The Database API supports transactions through the db.let() and db.commit() methods. These allow you to string together a series of changes to the database and then commit them together. For instance, here is a transaction to add the player Shoeless Joe Jackson to the database:

var trx = db.let('player',
   function(p){
      p.create('VERTEX', 'Player')
         .set({
            name:      'Shoeless Joe Jackson',
            birthDate: '1887-07-16',
            deathDate: '1951-12-05',
            batted:    'left',
            threw:     'right'
         })
   }).commit()
   .return('$player').all();

For more information, see Transactions.

Events

You may find it useful to run additional code around queries outside of the normal operations for your application. For instance, as part of a logging or debugging process, to record the queries made and how OrientDB or your application performed in serving the data.

Using the db.on() method, you can set custom code to run on certain events, such as the beginning and ending of queries. For instance,

db.on("endQuery", function(obj){
   console.log("DEBUG QUERY:", obj);
});

For more information, see Events.

Closing the Database

When you initialize a database instance, OrientDB begins to reserve system resources for the client to access and manipulate data through the server. In order to free up these resources when you're done, you need to close the open database instance, using the db.close() method.

db.close();

Database API