Remote connector

See also: Example application

The remote connector enables you to use a LoopBack application as a data source via REST. The client can be a LoopBack application, a Node application, or a browser-based application running LoopBack in the client. The connector uses Strong Remoting.

In general, using the remote connector is more convenient than calling into REST API, and enables you to switch the transport later if you need to.

Installation

In your application root directory, enter:

$ npm install loopback-connector-remote --save

This will install the module and add it as a dependency to the application’s package.json file.

Creating an remote data source

Create a new remote data source with the datasource generator:

$ apic create --type datasource

$ slc loopback:datasource

When prompted:

• For connector, scroll down and select other.
• For connector name without the loopback-connector- prefix, enter remote.

This creates an entry in datasources.json; Then you need to edit this to add the data source properties, for example:

...
 "myRemoteDataSource": {
    "name": "myRemoteDataSource",
    "connector": "remote",
    "url": "http://localhost:3000/api"
  }
 ...

The url property specifies the root URL of the LoopBack API.

Remote data source properties

Configuring authentication

The remote connector does not support JSON-based configuration of the authentication credentials; see issue #3. You can use the following code as a workaround. It assumes that your data source is called “remote” and the AccessToken id is provided in the variable “token”.

app.dataSources.remote.connector.remotes.auth = {
  bearer: new Buffer(token).toString('base64'),
  sendImmediately: true
};

Using with MongoDB connector

When using the MongoDB connector on the server and a Remote connector on the client, the following id property should be used.

"id": {"type": "string", "generated": true, "id": true}