Send just the model PK (or any other field) for nested model in Angular

Issue

Having the following sample models:

interface User {
  id: string
  organization: Organization
}

interface Organization {
  id: string
}

When I send a request, for example:

const user = new User("abc", new Organization("xyz"))
httpClient.post<User>(url, user)

Understandably, it looks like this:

{
  "id": "abc",
  "organization": {
    "id": "xyz"
  }
}

How can I send a request that looks like the following, instead?

{
  "id": "abc",
  "organization": "xyz"
}

I was hoping there would be some kind of mechanism to transform a request in HttpClient, but I can’t find anything.

Another approach was to convert the User to a plain JS object and manipulate it, but I can’t figure out how to do it:

const user = new User("abc", new Organization("xyz"))
const data = Object.assign({}, user);

data.organization = data.organization.id; // error, can’t assign string to Organization

So data is still a User, not a plain JS object.

What’s the best way to achieve it?

Solution

I found one solution but I’m not 100% happy with it. I won’t accept it for now, in case someone can offer a better one.

Edit: marked as accepted answer.

const user = new User("abc", new Organization("xyz"));

// clone the `user` object as I don’t want to modify the original
// (this step is optional)
const data = Object.assign({}, user);

// overwrite the `organization` property on the object
// with the value of `organization.id`
Object.assign(data, { organization: data.organization.id });

httpClient.post<User>(url, data)

To keep it clean, I added it as a method on the User class:

class User
{
    constructor(
        id: string,
        organization: Organization
    ) { }

    asRequestData()
    {
        const data = Object.assign({}, this);
        Object.assign(data, { organization: data.organization?.name });

        return data;
    }
}

httpClient.post<User>(url, user.asRequestData())

Answered By – Pawel Decowski

This Answer collected from stackoverflow, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5 , cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0