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Defining Unique Relationships

Defining unique relationships can be extremely useful for maintaining data. For example, if you want to define a Profile for your User node, but every user should only have one profile, then you can define that as such.

The defineUniqueRelationship method​

defineUniqueRelationships takes the following arguments:

  • toNodeType: the node type definition (as defined in its own definition file)

How to Define a Unique Relationship​

Defining a unique relationship is as simple as appending a method call to the end of the defineNodeType function when defining a node.

For example, lets say we want our User Node to have one unique Profile Node and one unique Birthday Node, because why would a user have more than one birthday?

  1. Define your node type and stateSchema using defineNodeType and Zod
./src/libs/nodes/UserNodeType.ts
import { z } from "zod";
import { defineNodeType } from "@thinairthings/uix";

export const UserNodeType = defineNodeType(
    "User",
    z.object({
      username: z.string().min(4),
      email: z.string().email(),
      password: z.string().min(8),
    }),
)
  1. Import the node types you wish to create unique relationships for
./src/libs/nodes/UserNodeType.ts
import { z } from "zod";
import { defineNodeType } from "@thinairthings/uix";
import { ProfileNodeType } from "./ProfileNodeType";
import { BirthdayNodeType } from "./BirthdayNodeType";

export const UserNodeType = defineNodeType(
    "User",
    z.object({
      username: z.string().min(4),
      email: z.string().email(),
      password: z.string().min(8),
    }),
)
  1. Append the .defineUniqueRelationship() method to the end of the defineNodeType() call with the nodes passed in.

(Note: for more than one node like this scenario, you must pass them individually as individual method calls)

./src/libs/nodes/UserNodeType.ts
import { z } from "zod";
import { defineNodeType } from "@thinairthings/uix";
import { ProfileNodeType } from "./ProfileNodeType";
import { BirthdayNodeType } from "./BirthdayNodeType";

export const UserNodeType = defineNodeType(
    "User",
    z.object({
      username: z.string().min(4),
      email: z.string().email(),
      password: z.string().min(8),
    }),
).defineUniqueRelationship(ProfileNodeType)
.defineUniqueRelationship(BirthdayNodeType)

(Note: please make sure to run the CLI to see changes reflected)

Now what?​

With the unique relationships defined, you can now call functions such as getUniqueChildNode to fetch your unique node using its parent's node information.

This is great, because it means that you don't need to hunt for the User's Profile node ID/unique index when you already have the User's ID. Additionally, nodes that are attempted to be created using a unique relationship will be blocked. For example, nobody making an account will have more than one Profile or more than one Birthday.