Inconsistent API for remote methods and hooks

[bajtos]

As of LoopBack 2.0, there is a new method for defining remote method metadata Model.remoteMethod. To configure a prototype method, one has to supply a flag isStatic:

Model.remoteMethod('foo', { isStatic: false, ... });

A) This is inconsistent with the approach we have already in place for hooks (docs), where we prefix the method name with prototype.:

Model.beforeRemote('prototype.foo', ...);

B) The usage of this API - e.g. ('find', true) - is very ambiguous. What does true mean? One has to be very familiar with the API to understand what is the intent of such code snippet.

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We should modify Model.remoteMethod to support the prototype.foo notation too.

Since both Model.remoteMethod and Model.beforeRemote are thin wrappers around strong-remoting API, we should fix this problem in strong-remoting too.

[ritch]

I like this... the isStatic flag is very confusing when reading code using it.

[ritch]

All this really takes is to support prototype.methodName in sharedClass.find() (in strong-remoting)

[bajtos]

I briefly looked at the code in strong-remoting and realised that this feature will be more difficult than I originally thought, at least if we want to preserve backwards compatibility.

The major problem is that the current implementation evaluates isStatic as false by when it is not present.

Current behaviour:

loopback.Model.remoteMethod('foo', {}) // interpreted as a static method
loopback.Model.disableRemoteMethod('foo') // interpreted as a prototype method (!!)
loopback.Model.sharedClass.find('foo') // interpreted as a prototype method (!!)

Desired behaviour:

// static methods
loopback.Model.remoteMethod('foo', {}) 
loopback.Model.disableRemoteMethod('foo') // breaking change
loopback.Model.sharedClass.find('foo') // breaking change

// prototype methods
loopback.Model.remoteMethod('prototype.foo', {})
loopback.Model.disableRemoteMethod('prototype.foo') 
loopback.Model.sharedClass.find('prototype.foo')

[raymondfeng]

For the backward compatibility, what about allowing disableRemoteMethod/find to try both prototype and static methods? It's fairly rare to have conflicting names for static and prototype methods, especially for remoting.