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In every application data can take on many different representations:
- the API format (what your backend understands)
- the wire format (what your backend sends you)
- the cache format (what your frontend deserializes the wire format into)
- the presentation format (what your frontend transforms the cache format into for utility)
As much as possible, WarpDrive encourages aligning at-least the first three of these four formats. Aligning formats reduces the mental complexity required to understand the flow of data through your application, making it easier to debug, and reduces the computation necessary at each layer, making your application faster.
Misalignment tends to occur when API and Application developers don't work together to understand requirements, or when the format in use is "lossy" (unable to accurately convey the full scope of information being serialized).
We encourage the use of JSON:API as the wire and cache format because unlike most other formats in use today it encodes information about your data in a near-lossless and easily-cacheable manner.
For the presentation format, we encourage applications to limit the amount of manual transformation done. Applications should wherever possible align the interfaces of the data components expect to the shape of the data available, rather than transforming data to fit into the component. This said, WarpDrive offers powerful schema-defined transformation and derivation capabilities built-in to the reactivity layer for presenting data from the cache. Handling transformation universally via schema enables apps to align to component interfaces where needed in a safer, more performant manner.
We'll explore these capabilities later on in the manual in the sections on Presentation and Schemas. But first, lets take some time to look at some key concepts surrounding the wire and cache format.
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