Working with Models

This section of the documentation focuses on the model methods provided by Waterline out of the box. In addition to these, additional methods can come from hooks (i.e. the resourceful pubsub methods), be exposed by the underlying adapters to provide custom functionality, or be hand-written in your app to wrap reusable custom code.

For an in-depth introduction to models in Sails/Waterline, see http://sailsjs.org/#/documentation/concepts/ORM/Models.html.

screenshot of a Waterline/Sails model in Sublime Text 2

Built-In Model Methods

In general, model methods are asynchronous, meaning you cannot just call them and use the return value. Instead, you must use callbacks, or promises. Most built-in model methods accept a callback as an optional final argument. If the callback is not supplied, a chainable Query object is returned, which has methods like .where() and .exec(). See Working with Queries for more on that.

Method	Summary
`.find()`	Lookup an array of records which match the specified criteria
`.findOne()`	Lookup a single record which matches the specified criteria, or send back `null` if it doesn't.
`.update()`	Update records matching the specified criteria, setting the specified object of `attrName:value` pairs.
`.destroy()`	Destroy records matching the specified criteria.
`.findOrCreate()`	Lookup a single record which matches the specified criteria, or create it if it doesn't.
`.count()`	Get the total count of records which match the specified criteria.
`.native()`/`query()`	Make a direct call to the underlying database driver.
`.stream()`	Return a readable (object-mode) stream of records which match the specified criteria

`sails.models`

If you need to disable global variables in Sails, you can still use sails.models.<model_identity> to access your models.

A model's identity is different than its globalId. The globalId is determined automatically from the name of the model, whereas the identity is the all-lowercased version. For instance, you the model defined in api/models/Kitten.js has a globalId of Kitten, but its identity is kitten. For example:

// Kitten === sails.models.kitten
sails.models.kitten.find().exec(function (err, allTheKittens) {
  // We also could have just used `Kitten.find().exec(...)`
  // if we'd left the global variable exposed.
})