What is the purpose of the ACTIVATE_HOOKS symbol?

[jamesvillarrubia]

I've been stepping through feathers v4 in order to build a new plugin with backwards compatibility for v4 and v5 and I have come across an odd Symbol that I'm not sure the purpose of:

feathers/packages/feathers/lib/hooks/index.js

Lines 137 to 152 in b5e94c4

	service.methods = Object.getOwnPropertyNames(service)
	.filter(key => typeof service[key] === 'function' && service[key][ACTIVATE_HOOKS])
	.reduce((result, methodName) => {
	result[methodName] = service[methodName][ACTIVATE_HOOKS];
	return result;
	}, service.methods || {});
	Object.assign(service.methods, {
	find: ['params'],
	get: ['id', 'params'],
	create: ['data', 'params'],
	update: ['id', 'data', 'params'],
	patch: ['id', 'data', 'params'],
	remove: ['id', 'params']
	});

No matter the library or DB adapter, it seems like service[key][ACTIVATE_HOOKS] is always undefined, so this service.methods filter is always [] and the resulting list of methods is assigned to the default list.

Can someone explain what the intent of that symbol is?

[daffl]

It provides functionality to enable hooks on custom service methods that has been added but never been documented. In v5 this has been superseded by the general purpose https://github.com/feathersjs/hooks and the new custom method system

[jamesvillarrubia]

Got it! I thought that might be the case. I'm working with custom methods and they are getting filtered in v4, so I was investigating. Thanks!