There seem to be two kinds of definitions of what a record could be:

1. A full representation of a resource,e.g. (defrecord User [id name age 
gender address])
2. A *handle* to a resource, e.g. (defrecord User [id]), e.g. [wikipedia] 
below

Some protocols only ever need a handle, not the full resource, e.g.:

    (retrieve-from-datomic (->User 42)

But other protocols need a complete representation, e.g.:

    (produce-edn-for-api (->User 42 "John Doe" 64 ...)

Is there an idiomatic approach to solving this problem?  It seems like the 
options are:

A. Define complete representations (#1 above) everywhere, and only 
partially fill them in when used as handles (e.g. (->User 42 nil nil nil 
nil).  This seems somewhat annoying and worse, makes it unclear what 
exactly is the data expected as I/O for a given function, which was 
original point of making a named, well-defined data structure.

B. Define two separate but related records (e.g. UserHandle vs. User).  
This is also somewhat annoyingly duplicative, especially since every 
protocol implemented by UserHandle will need to be re-implemented by User 
(though it could be a simple delegation thereto).

Is there a standard and/or satisfying way to solve this?  Thanks.

- Elliot


[wikipedia] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handle_%28computing%29


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