What is the preferred method for using referenced/lookup data?

[stucork]

@singh

1. What is the preferred method to pass data between the client and server?
   Should we be passing the ids and do an object lookup on the server and save those references when adding a row or should we pass the object itself and save a lookup on the server?

Typically I send table rows as a list of dicts and include both the id and the row itself

def get_row_as_dict(row):
  row_as_dict = dict(row)
  row_as_dict['row'] = row
  row_as_dict['id'] = row.get_id()

rows_as_dicts = []
for row in app_tables.my_table.search():
  row_as_dict = get_row_as_dict(row)
  rows_as_dicts.append(row_as_dict)

return rows_as_dicts

I adapt this if I have linked rows that I also need to unpack.

I do it this way because I like the syntax for updating a table row

@anvil.server.callable
def update_row(row_as_dict):
  row = row_as_dict["row"]
  row.update(**{k:row_as_dict[k] for k, _ in row})

I also like to have the id just in case I need it. but also because I use the Tabulator dependency which works best with a unique identifier for row objects and the id seems the most sensible.

Getting a table_row by id is a quick lookup for anvil on the server so working with the id alone to get the table row won’t be a performance issue.

NB: you do need to know which table the row came from in order to look it up