Ember: difference between unloadRecord and destroy for new records

Question

In the context of a route model that hasn't been persisted to the backend yet (its id is null still and we haven't called save yet), if we want to discard the record, is it more correct to use unloadRecord or destroy?

Context: For use when a form is transitioned away from but is neither saved nor canceled. I'm new to ember and I am a bit confused by the fact that unloadRecord is private for Model but not for Store. It may be obvious but I am also not positive when it is correct to refer to the object as a model vs. a record (I am assuming they are sometimes used interchangeably but it's technically correct to call them records if they are existing instances).

Answer 1

If you create but don't save a record it will be in the root.loaded.created.uncommitted state (Ember 2.4). Calling destroyRecord will schedule a save but will also immediately change the state to root.deleted.saved, so the save request will never be executed.

You can verify this in your browser by checking the network requests created by calling destroyRecord on an newly created record.

There is some additional work performed around scheduling a save when calling destroyRecord as opposed to unloadRecord, so the trade-off here is between scheduling a save that is never executed and the additional complexity of determining the model state prior to deleting the record.

unloadRecord - unloads record from the store

deleteRecord - delete the record but do not save it (must call save)

destroyRecord - calls deleteRecord and save

rollbackAttributes - rolls back attributes or, if model isNew, removes it from the store