What is the difference between .all() and .one() in Restangular?

Question

What is the difference between these two? Both seems to make a GET to /users and retrieve them.

Restangular.one('users').getList().then(function(users) {
    // do something with users
});

Restangular.all('users').getList().then(function(users) {
    // do something with users
});

I understand that you can do one('users', 123) and it will retrieve /users/123 but without the second argument it seems to be the same thing. Why not just have one method in that case?

Answer 1

The one() function has a second argument that accepts an id e.g. .one('users', 1).

• one('users', 1).get() translates to /users/1
• all('users').getList() translates to /users

Unlike all(), one() is not generally used with .getList() without argument. However, if you were to call .one('users', 1).getList('emails') or .one('users', 1).all('emails').getList(), then you would make a GET request to /users/1/emails.

Answer 2

My guess is that they are there for expressing an intention of what you are going to do. I would understand those as a way to build the url, expressing if you are accessing to the whole resource or to a specific one.

In the end, they are gonna build and do a GET request but because you do a GET and retrieve some data it does not mean that it should be used in that way.

Example extracted from https://github.com/mgonto/restangular/issues/450

getList can be called both ways. If it's called in an element one, then it needs a subelement to get to a Collection. Otherwise, it fetches the collection. So the following is the same:

Restangular.one('places', 123).getList('venues')        // GET /places/123/venues
Restangular.one('places', 123).all('venues').getList()  // GET /places/123/venues

As you can see, it is more expressive to call one('places', 123).all('venues') to understand that you just want the venues located in the area/place 123.

Maybe the following url will help you:

https://github.com/mgonto/restangular/issues/450