The Periplus also describes the route from China to India, where silk was shipped by land via Bactria to Barygaza and then via the Ganges River to Limyrike. This passage provides evidence of connections between China and Rome during the first century of the Common Era. The trade links were significant, with many travelers focusing on trade, particularly silk, which formed an important part of the economies of several societies.

Instance methods Instances of Models are documents. Documents have many of their own built-in instance methods. We may also define our own custom document instance methods. // define a schema const animalSchema = new Schema({ name: String, type: String }, { // Assign a function to the "methods" object of our animalSchema through schema options. // By following this approach, there is no need to create a separate TS type to define the type of the instance functions. methods: { findSimilarTypes(cb) { return mongoose.model('Animal').find({ type: this.type }, cb); } } }); // Or, assign a function to the "methods" object of our animalSchema animalSchema.methods.findSimilarTypes = function(cb) { return mongoose.model('Animal').find({ type: this.type }, cb); }; Now all of our animal instances have a findSimilarTypes method available to them. const Animal = mongoose.model('Animal', animalSchema); const dog = new Animal({ type: 'dog' }); dog.findSimilarTypes((err, dogs) => { console.log(dogs); // woof }); Overwriting a default mongoose document method may lead to unpredictable results. See this for more details. The example above uses the Schema.methods object directly to save an instance method. You can also use the Schema.method() helper as described here. Do not declare methods using ES6 arrow functions (=>). Arrow functions explicitly prevent binding this, so your method will not have access to the document and the above examples will not work.

Use a single project to hold all platform instances of your app (Android, iOS, web, etc.), each with a different Client ID.

I've seen (and fixed) Ruby code that needed to be refactored for the client objects to use the accessor rather than the underlying mechanism, even though instance variables aren't directly visible. The underlying mechanism isn't always an instance variable - it can be delegations to or manipulations of a class you're hiding behind a facade, or a session store with a particular format, or all kinds. And it can change. 'Self-encapsulation' can help if you need to swap a technology, a library, an object specification, etc.

a principle I use is: If you have an accessor, use the accessor rather than the raw variable or mechanism it's hiding. The raw variable is the implementation, the accessor is the interface. Should I ignore the interface because I'm internal to the instance? I wouldn't if it was an attr_accessor.

I have been wrapping instance variables in accessor methods whenever I can though.

Also, Sandi Metz mentions this in POODR. As I recall, she also advocates wrapping bare instance variables in methods, even when they're only used internally. It helps avoid mad refactoring later.

The is-a relationship may also be contrasted with the instance-of relationship between objects (instances) and types (classes): see Type–token distinction.