Smart Collections

Please be sure of your agent type and version and pick the right documentation accordingly.

Node.js

This is the documentation of the forest-express-sequelize and forest-express-mongoose Node.js agents that will soon reach end-of-support.

forest-express-sequelize v9 and forest-express-mongoose v9 are replaced by @forestadmin/agent v1.

Please check your agent type and version and read on or switch to the right documentation.

Ruby on Rails

This is still the latest Ruby on Rails documentation of the forest_liana agent, you’re at the right place, please read on.

Python

This is the documentation of the django-forestadmin Django agent that will soon reach end-of-support.

If you’re using a Django agent, notice that django-forestadmin v1 is replaced by forestadmin-agent-django v1.

If you’re using a Flask agent, go to the forestadmin-agent-flask v1 documentation.

Please check your agent type and version and read on or switch to the right documentation.

PHP

This is the documentation of the forestadmin/laravel-forestadmin Laravel agent that will soon reach end-of-support.

If you’re using a Laravel agent, notice that forestadmin/laravel-forestadmin v1 is replaced by forestadmin/laravel-forestadmin v3.

If you’re using a Symfony agent, go to the forestadmin/symfony-forestadmin v1 documentation.

Please check your agent type and version and read on or switch to the right documentation.

Smart Collections

What is a Smart Collection?

A Smart Collection is a Forest Collection based on your API implementation. It allows you to reconcile fields of data coming from different or external sources in a single tabular view (by default), without having to physically store them into your database.

Fields of data could be coming from many other sources such as other B2B SaaS (e.g. Zendesk, Salesforce, Stripe), in-memory database, message broker, etc.

This is an advanced notion. If you're just starting with Forest Admin, you should skip this for now.

In the following example, we have created a Smart Collection called customer_statsallowing us to see all customers who have placed orders, the number of order placed and the total amount of those orders.

For an example of advanced customization and featuring an Amazon S3 integration, you can see here how we've stored in our live demo the companies' legal documents on Amazon S3 and how we've implemented a Smart Collection to access and manipulate them.

Creating a Smart Collection

SQL

First, we declare the customer_stats collection in the forest/ directory.

In this Smart Collection, we want to display for each customer its email address, the number of orders made (in a field orders_count) and the sum of the price of all those orders (in a field total_amount).

You can check out the list of available field options if you need it.

You MUST declare an id field when creating a Smart Collection. The value of this field for each record MUST be unique.

As we are using the customer id in this example, we do not need to declare an id manually.

forest/customer_stats.js

const { collection } = require('forest-express-sequelize');
const models = require('../models');

collection('customer_stats', {
  isSearchable: true,
  fields: [
    {
      field: 'email',
      type: 'String',
    },
    {
      field: 'orders_count',
      type: 'Number',
    },
    {
      field: 'total_amount',
      type: 'Number',
    },
  ],
});

The optionisSearchable: true added to your collection allows to display the search bar. Note that you will have to implement the search yourself by including it into your own get logic.

Mongodb

Work in progress - this section will soon be released

Rails

First, we declare the CustomerStat collection in the lib/forest-liana/collections/ directory.

In this Smart Collection, we want to display for each customer its email address, the number of orders made (in a field orders_count) and the sum of the price of all those orders (in a field total_amount).

You can check out the list of available field options if you need it.

You MUST declare an id field when creating a Smart Collection. The value of this field for each record MUST be unique.

As we are using the customer id in this example, we do not need to declare an id manually.

lib/forest-liana/collections/customer_stat.rb

class Forest::CustomerStat
  include ForestLiana::Collection

  collection :CustomerStat, is_searchable: true

  field :id, type: 'Number', is_read_only: true
  field :email, type: 'String', is_read_only: true
  field :orders_count, type: 'Number', is_read_only: true
  field :total_amount, type: 'Number', is_read_only: true

end

The optionis_searchable: true added to your collection allows to display the search bar. Note that you will have to implement the search yourself by including it into your own get logic in your collection controller.

Django

First, we declare the CustomerStat collection in the app/forest/customer_stat.py file.

In this Smart Collection, we want to display for each customer its email address, the number of orders made (in a field orders_count) and the sum of the price of all those orders (in a field total_amount).

You can check out the list of available field options if you need it.

You MUST declare an id field when creating a Smart Collection. The value of this field for each record MUST be unique.

As we are using the customer id in this example, we do not need to declare an id

app/forest/customer_stat.py

from django_forest.utils.collection import Collection


class CustomerStat(Collection):

    is_searchable = True

    def load(self):
        self.name = 'CustomerStat'
        self.fields = [
            {
                'field': 'id',
                'type': 'Number',
            },
            {
                'field': 'email',
                'type': 'String'
            },
            {
                'field': 'orders_count',
                'type': 'Number'
            },
            {
                'field': 'total_count',
                'type': 'Number'
            }
        ]


Collection.register(CustomerStat)

Ensure the file app/forest/__init__.py exists and contains the import of the previous defined class :

app/forest/__init__.py

from app.forest.customer_stat import CustomerStat

The optionis_searchable = True added to your collection allows to display the search bar. Note that you will have to implement the search yourself by including it into your own get logic in your collection controller.

Laravel

First, we declare the CustomerStat collection in the app/Models/SmartCollections/CustomerStat.php file.

In this Smart Collection, we want to display for each customer its email address, the number of orders made (in a field orders_count) and the sum of the price of all those orders (in a field total_amount).

You can check out the list of available field options if you need it.

You MUST declare an id field when creating a Smart Collection. The value of this field for each record MUST be unique.

As we are using the customer id in this example, we do not need to declare an id

app/Models/SmartCollections/CustomerStat.php

<?php

namespace App\Models\SmartCollections;

use ForestAdmin\LaravelForestAdmin\Services\SmartFeatures\SmartCollection;
use ForestAdmin\LaravelForestAdmin\Services\SmartFeatures\SmartField;
use Illuminate\Support\Collection;

class CustomerStat extends SmartCollection
{
    protected string $name = 'customerStat';

    protected bool $is_searchable = true;

    protected bool $is_read_only = true;

    /**
     * @return Collection
     */
    public function fields(): Collection
    {
        return collect(
            [
                new SmartField(
                    [
                        'field' => 'id',
                        'type'  => 'Number',
                    ]
                ),
                new SmartField(
                    [
                        'field' => 'email',
                        'type'  => 'String',
                    ]
                ),
                new SmartField(
                    [
                        'field' => 'orders_count',
                        'type'  => 'Number',
                    ]
                ),
                new SmartField(
                    [
                        'field' => 'total_count',
                        'type'  => 'Number',
                    ]
                ),
            ]
        );
    }
}

The optionis_searchable = True added to your collection allows to display the search bar. Note that you will have to implement the search yourself by including it into your own get logic in your collection controller.

Implementing the GET (all records)

At this time, there’s no Smart Collection Implementation because no route in your app handles the API call yet.

SQL

In the file routes/customer_stats.js, we’ve created a new route to implement the API behind the Smart Collection.

The logic here is to list all the customers that have made orders (with their email), to count the number of orders made and to sum up the price of all the orders.

The limit and offset variables are used to paginate your collection according to the number of records per page set in your UI.

We have implemented a search logic to catch if a search query (accessible through req.query.search) has been performed and to return all records for which the email field matches the search.

Finally, the last step is to serialize the response data in the expected format which is simply a standard JSON API document. A class called RecordSerializer is made available to help you serialize the records. You can read more about this class here.

/routes/customer_stats.js

const { RecordSerializer } = require('forest-express-sequelize');
const express = require('express');
const router = express.Router();
const { connections } = require('../models');

const sequelize = connections.default;

router.get('/customer_stats', (req, res, next) => {
  const limit = parseInt(req.query.page.size) || 20;
  const offset = (parseInt(req.query.page.number) - 1) * limit;
  const queryType = sequelize.QueryTypes.SELECT;
  let conditionSearch = '';

  if (req.query.search) {
    conditionSearch = `customers.email LIKE '%${req.query.search.replace(
      /\'/g,
      "''"
    )}%'`;
  }

  const queryData = `
    SELECT customers.id,
      customers.email,
      count(orders.*) AS orders_count,
      sum(products.price) AS total_amount,
      customers.created_at,
      customers.updated_at
    FROM customers
    JOIN orders ON customers.id = orders.customer_id
    JOIN products ON orders.product_id = products.id
    ${conditionSearch ? `WHERE ${conditionSearch}` : ''}
    GROUP BY customers.id
    ORDER BY customers.id
    LIMIT ${limit}
    OFFSET ${offset}
  `;

  const queryCount = `
    SELECT COUNT(*)
    FROM customers
    WHERE
      EXISTS (
        SELECT *
        FROM orders
        WHERE orders.customer_id = customers.id
      )
      ${conditionSearch ? `AND ${conditionSearch}` : ''}
  `;

  Promise.all([
    sequelize.query(queryData, { type: queryType }),
    sequelize.query(queryCount, { type: queryType }),
  ])
    .then(async ([customerStatsList, customerStatsCount]) => {
      const customerStatsSerializer = new RecordSerializer({
        name: 'customer_stats',
      });
      const customerStats = await customerStatsSerializer.serialize(
        customerStatsList
      );
      const count = customerStatsCount[0].count;
      res.send({ ...customerStats, meta: { count: count } });
    })
    .catch((err) => next(err));
});

module.exports = router;

Mongodb

Work in progress - this section will soon be released

Rails

In the repository lib/forest_liana/controllers/, we’ve created a controller file customer_stats.rb to implement API behind the Smart Collection.

The logic here is to index all the customers that have made orders (with their email), to count the number of orders made and to sum up the price of all the orders.

The limit and offset variables are used to paginate your collection according to the number of records per page set in your UI.

We have implemented a search logic to catch if a search query (accessible through params[:search]) has been performed and to return all records for which the email field matches the search.

Finally, the last step is to serialize the response data in the expected format which is simply a standard JSON API document. We use the JSON API Serializer library for this task.

lib/forest-liana/controllers/customer_stats_controller.rb

class Forest::CustomerStatsController < ForestLiana::ApplicationController
  require 'jsonapi-serializers'

  before_action :set_params, only: [:index]

  class BaseSerializer
    include JSONAPI::Serializer

    def type
      'customerStat'
    end

    def format_name(attribute_name)
      attribute_name.to_s.underscore
    end

    def unformat_name(attribute_name)
      attribute_name.to_s.dasherize
    end
  end

  class CustomerStatSerializer < BaseSerializer
    attribute :email
    attribute :total_amount
    attribute :orders_count
  end

  def index
    customers_count = Customer.count_by_sql("
      SELECT COUNT(*)
      FROM customers
      WHERE
        EXISTS (
          SELECT *
          FROM orders
          WHERE orders.customer_id = customers.id
        )
        AND email LIKE '%#{@search}%'
    ")
    customer_stats = Customer.find_by_sql("
      SELECT customers.id,
        customers.email,
        count(orders.*) AS orders_count,
        sum(products.price) AS total_amount,
        customers.created_at,
        customers.updated_at
      FROM customers
      JOIN orders ON customers.id = orders.customer_id
      JOIN products ON orders.product_id = products.id
      WHERE email LIKE '%#{@search}%'
      GROUP BY customers.id
      ORDER BY customers.id
      LIMIT #{@limit}
      OFFSET #{@offset}
    ")
    customer_stats_json = CustomerStatSerializer.serialize(customer_stats, is_collection: true, meta: {count: customers_count})
    render json: customer_stats_json
  end

  private

  def set_params
    @limit = params[:page][:size].to_i
    @offset = (params[:page][:number].to_i - 1) * @limit
    @search = sanitize_sql_like(params[:search]? params[:search] : "")
  end

  def sanitize_sql_like(string, escape_character = "\\")
    pattern = Regexp.union(escape_character, "%", "_")
    string.gsub(pattern) { |x| [escape_character, x].join }
  end
end

You then need to create a route pointing to your collection's index action to get all your collection's records.

config/routes.rb

Rails.application.routes.draw do
  # MUST be declared before the mount ForestLiana::Engine.
  namespace :forest do
    get '/CustomerStat' => 'customer_stats#index'
  end

  mount ForestLiana::Engine => '/forest'

end

Django

First we will add the right path to the urls.py file

app/urls.py

from django.urls import path
from django.views.decorators.csrf import csrf_exempt

from . import views

app_name = 'app'
urlpatterns = [
    path('/CustomerStat', csrf_exempt(views.CustomerStatView.as_view()), name='customer-stats'),
]

Then we will create the pertained view

app/views.py

from django.http import JsonResponse
from django.views import generic
from django.db.models import Sum, Count

from django_forest.utils.schema.json_api_schema import JsonApiSchema
from django_forest.resources.utils.queryset.pagination import PaginationMixin
from django_forest.resources.utils.queryset.search import SearchMixin

class CustomerStatView(PaginationMixin, SearchMixin, generic.ListView):

    def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
        params = request.GET.dict()

        # queryset
        queryset = Customer.objects.all()

        # annotate
        queryset = queryset.annotate(total_amount=Sum('product__prices'))
        queryset = queryset.annotate(orders_count=Count('orders'))

        # search
        queryset = queryset.filter(self.get_search(params, Customer))

        # pagination
        queryset = self.get_pagination(params, queryset)

        # use automatically generated Schema or use your own thanks to marshmallow-jsonapi
        Schema = JsonApiSchema.get('CustomerStat')
        data = Schema().dump(queryset, many=True)

        return JsonResponse(data, safe=False)

Laravel

Create a controller CustomerStatsController

app/Http/Controllers/CustomerStatsController.php

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\Models\Customer;
use ForestAdmin\LaravelForestAdmin\Facades\JsonApi;
use Illuminate\Http\JsonResponse;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;

class CustomerStatsController extends Controller
{
    /**
     * @return JsonResponse
     */
    public function index(): JsonResponse
    {
        $customerStats = Customer::select(DB::raw('customers.id, customers.email, COUNT(DISTINCT orders.*) AS orders_count, SUM(products.price) AS total_count'))
            ->join('orders', 'orders.customer_id', '=', 'customers.id')
            ->join('order_product', 'order_product.order_id', '=', 'orders.id')
            ->join('products', 'products.id', '=', 'order_product.product_id')
            ->groupBy('customers.id')
            ->orderBy('customers.id');

        if (request()->has('search')) {
            $customerStats->whereRaw("LOWER (customers.email) LIKE LOWER(?)", ['%' . request()->input('search') . '%']);
        }

        $pageParams = request()->query('page') ?? [];

        return response()->json(
            JsonApi::render(
                $customerStats->paginate(
                    $pageParams['size'] ?? null,
                    '*',
                    'page',
                    $pageParams['number'] ?? null
                ),
                'customerStat',
            )
        );
    }
}

Then add the route.

routes/web.php

<?php

use App\Http\Controllers\CustomerStatsController;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;

Route::get('forest/customerStat', [CustomerStatsController::class, 'index']);

Now we are all set, we can access the Smart Collection as any other collection.

In this example we have only implemented the GET all records action but you can also add the following actions: GET specific records, PUT, DELETE and POST. These are shown in the next page explaining how a Smart Collection can be used to access and manipulate data stored in Amazon S3.