The structure of the typeMap object is as follows:

{
    type0: function || object,
    type1: function || object,
    ...
    typeN: function || object
}

Where if it is a function, it is assumed to be an object constructor that takes the

value of _value as the initialization parameters. It is serialized assuming object.toString() serialization. If it is an object, then it is assumed to be an object of general form:

{
    type: function, //constructor.
    deserialize:    function(value) //The function that parses the value and constructs the object defined by type appropriately.
    serialize:  function(object) //The function that converts the object back into the proper file format form.
}

The keywordArgs parameter may either be an instance of conforming to dojo/data/api/Request or may be a simple anonymous object that may contain any of the following:

{
    query: query-object or query-string,
    queryOptions: object,
    onBegin: Function,
    onItem: Function,
    onComplete: Function,
    onError: Function,
    scope: object,
    start: int
    count: int
    sort: array
}

All implementations should accept keywordArgs objects with any of

the 9 standard properties: query, onBegin, onItem, onComplete, onError scope, sort, start, and count. Some implementations may accept additional properties in the keywordArgs object as valid parameters, such as {includeOutliers:true}.

The query parameter

The query may be optional in some data store implementations. The dojo/data/api/Read API does not specify the syntax or semantics of the query itself -- each different data store implementation may have its own notion of what a query should look like. However, as of dojo 0.9, 1.0, and 1.1, all the provided datastores in dojo.data and dojox.data support an object structure query, where the object is a set of name/value parameters such as { attrFoo: valueBar, attrFoo1: valueBar1}. Most of the dijit widgets, such as ComboBox assume this to be the case when working with a datastore when they dynamically update the query. Therefore, for maximum compatibility with dijit widgets the recommended query parameter is a key/value object. That does not mean that the the datastore may not take alternative query forms, such as a simple string, a Date, a number, or a mix of such. Ultimately, The dojo/data/api/Read API is agnostic about what the query format.

Further note: In general for query objects that accept strings as attribute value matches, the store should also support basic filtering capability, such as (match any character) and ? (match single character). An example query that is a query object would be like: { attrFoo: "value"}. Which generally means match all items where they have an attribute named attrFoo, with a value that starts with 'value'.

The queryOptions parameter

The queryOptions parameter is an optional parameter used to specify options that may modify the query in some fashion, such as doing a case insensitive search, or doing a deep search where all items in a hierarchical representation of data are scanned instead of just the root items. It currently defines two options that all datastores should attempt to honor if possible:

{
    ignoreCase: boolean, // Whether or not the query should match case sensitively or not.  Default behaviour is false.
    deep: boolean   // Whether or not a fetch should do a deep search of items and all child
                    // items instead of just root-level items in a datastore.  Default is false.
}

The onBegin parameter.

function(size, request); If an onBegin callback function is provided, the callback function will be called just once, before the first onItem callback is called. The onBegin callback function will be passed two arguments, the the total number of items identified and the Request object. If the total number is unknown, then size will be -1. Note that size is not necessarily the size of the collection of items returned from the query, as the request may have specified to return only a subset of the total set of items through the use of the start and count parameters.

The onItem parameter.

function(item, request);

If an onItem callback function is provided, the callback function will be called as each item in the result is received. The callback function will be passed two arguments: the item itself, and the Request object.

The onComplete parameter.

function(items, request);

If an onComplete callback function is provided, the callback function will be called just once, after the last onItem callback is called. Note that if the onItem callback is not present, then onComplete will be passed an array containing all items which matched the query and the request object. If the onItem callback is present, then onComplete is called as: onComplete(null, request).

The onError parameter.

function(errorData, request);

If an onError callback function is provided, the callback function will be called if there is any sort of error while attempting to execute the query. The onError callback function will be passed two arguments: an Error object and the Request object.

The scope parameter.

If a scope object is provided, all of the callback functions (onItem, onComplete, onError, etc) will be invoked in the context of the scope object. In the body of the callback function, the value of the "this" keyword will be the scope object. If no scope object is provided, the callback functions will be called in the context of dojo.global(). For example, onItem.call(scope, item, request) vs. onItem.call(dojo.global(), item, request)

The start parameter.

If a start parameter is specified, this is a indication to the datastore to only start returning items once the start number of items have been located and skipped. When this parameter is paired with 'count', the store should be able to page across queries with millions of hits by only returning subsets of the hits for each query

The count parameter.

If a count parameter is specified, this is a indication to the datastore to only return up to that many items. This allows a fetch call that may have millions of item matches to be paired down to something reasonable.

The sort parameter.

If a sort parameter is specified, this is a indication to the datastore to sort the items in some manner before returning the items. The array is an array of javascript objects that must conform to the following format to be applied to the fetching of items:

{
    attribute: attribute || attribute-name-string,
    descending: true|false;   // Optional.  Default is false.
}

Note that when comparing attributes, if an item contains no value for the attribute

(undefined), then it the default ascending sort logic should push it to the bottom of the list. In the descending order case, it such items should appear at the top of the list.