I'm trying to find a way to build a robust report library that I can use with a Django project.
Essentially, what I'm looking for is a way to access a list of functions(reports) that I can allow an end-user to attach to a Django model.
For example, let's say I have an Employee object. Well, I have a module called reports.py that has a growing list of possible reports that take an employee object and output a report, usually in JSON form. There might be number of timecards submitted, number of supervisions created, etc.
I want to be able to link those changing report lists to the Employee object via a FK called (job description), so admins can create custom reports per job description.
What I've tried:
Direct model methods: good for some things, but it requires a programmer to call them in a template or via API to generate some output. Since the available reports are changing, I don't want to hard-code anything and would rather allow the end-user to choose from a list of available reports and attach them to a related model (say a JobDescription).
dir(reports): I could offer up a form where the select values are the results from dir(reports), but then I'd get the names of variables/libraries called in the file, not just a list of available reports
Am I missing something? Is there a way to create a custom class from which I can call all methods available? Where would I even start with that type of architecture?
I really appreciate any sort of input re: the path to take. Really just a 'look in this direction' response would be really appreciated.
What I would do is expand on your dir(reports) idea and create a dynamically loaded module system. Have a folder with .py files containing module classes. Here's an example of how you can dynamically load classes in Python.
Each class would have a static function called getReportName() so you could show something readable to the user, and a member function createReport(self, myModel) which gets the model and does it's magic on it.
And then just show all the possible reports to the user, user selects one and you run the createReport on the selected class.
In the future you might think about having different report folders for different models, and this too should be possible by reflection using model's __name__ attribute.
Related
I am wondering on how to implement pure controller functions in a Django's' "biased" MVC scheme. Let me explain it on an example.
Let's say I have a model of an Invoice, which has some attributes (say net, gross etc.). I can present it to the user using a view + template. And that's fine and easy.
But now, I want to send this invoice to a client. This is a more complicated thing, inluding more models (i.e. create an addressed Package model, get a number and let's say few other thing including creating and modifying not only Invoice model itself, but also creating and updating few other model types and instances.
I want this "action" to be available in multiple places of my web application, so going by the book I need to create a view with those actions implemented and bind it to some URL. Probably it should be implemented in POST action.
My questions are:
What kind of generic view should it be (just View? DetailView? other?).
Where should this View redirect after succesfull "send"? The simplest answer would be to redirect to the same referring page, but is this a correct way?
What if I want this "action" to be ran in background (say, send all unsend invoices at midnight) using celery or such? Of course I can make this a celery task and call it in a view. But is this clean django'ish solution? Where do you store such pure business methods in an app/project?
I am trying to connect my custom api to a plone website using the pmr2.oauth provider on the plone website and using oauthV1. Everything goes smoothly from requesting a temporary key to recieving the oauth access tokens.
But when I try to access the resources I get an invalid scope. I have been told to fill in the content type scope manager in pmr2.oauth package, I have to fill a mapping for each of the following portal types to a list of permitted subpaths: Plone site, Collection, File, Folder, Manager Folder, Page, Page and subsite.
But I have no idea what to fill in here, so I hope maybe you guys can help me.
Package owner here, first off I must apologize and say I can probably document this better (sure it's documented via doctests but it can be made better)!
What you need to fill there is the view that you want to access for that particular content type. For instance, if you wish to show the listing of all the items from within a collection you would figure out what the name of the view is (in this case, atct_topic_view). For a standard Page it would be document_view. That said, OAuth typically targets web-services that typically communicates via a more concise format, such as json, so it is possible for developers to develop new views specific to some existing (or custom) Plone content types and then these can be added to the mappings to be made available.
Lastly, the mappings are essentially the endpoint, plus an optional subpath which can be a wildcard. As of writing, specifying a wildcard for custom subpaths does not imply the root parent view being available, so let's say you have a custom download view that can let user list the formats which links to subpaths within for the actual content, you might do something like this:
Collection:
download_feed
download_feed/*
Would make available the download_feed view within the Collection content type and then any subpaths within (generally made available by implementing zope.publisher.interfaces.IPublishTraverse for the custom view).
Alternatively you can write your own ScopeManager. Just create a class that inherit from pmr2.oauth.scope.BaseScopeManager (or BTreeScopeManager), implement all the methods (and tests) and then register this within your code or with a zcml like this:
<adapter
for="zope.annotation.interfaces.IAnnotatable
your.app.interfaces.IAppLayer"
factory="your.app.ScopeManager"
provides="pmr2.oauth.interfaces.IScopeManager"
/>
Which should then override the default (Portal) Content Type based scope manager with your own.
I'm trying to write my own Trac plugin to notify an external system of changes to tickets matching a certain criteria. From my research so far, I've figured out that implementing the ITicketChangeListener interface is the way to go.
The method definitions are all very straight forward, but what's not straight forward for me is the Ticket object and accessing its custom fields. I've learned that you can access default ticket fields as simply as:
# t is a Ticket object
theStatus = t['status']
I've found several sources that say this won't work:
myCustomField = t['my_custom_field']
Yet none of them tell me what will work.
In addition, I need to know if the old_values argument of the ticket_changed() method will have my custom fields or if I'll have to do something different there as well.
I'm fairly new to Python and very new to Trac. Any help to point me in the right direction is appreciated.
The sources are wrong about custom ticket fields. The value-by-name approach should work. And *old_values* contains all fields values, including custom fields too. That's it.
You may want to look at the TracAnnouncer source for some change-listener coding examples.
I've been working with django over past couple of months. It seems that if I need some new value in a template, the only way to accomplish that is to pass it through the view function directly or an object that can be somehow used to retrieve that information.
What if I want to "PULL" information from the template? Consider the following scenario. I have a template "template1" associated with Application1. Suppose in one column of this template, I want to import information from second application "Application2". Currently the only way I know is to use the Application1's view functions to pull that info from Application2. For every new application I need to change my Application1's view function. So in case I want to keep adding information from different applications(2,3,4 etc), I would need to keep on changing the view function of Application1. This could get cumbersome.
So what I want is something like Wordpress's widget function or Joomla's module type functionality. Simple plug and play, that can "pull" the information from different sources(apps). Does django have something of this sort built-in?
Ah, you have encountered one of the fundamental differences between Django (and most Python templating frameworks) and WordPress (and most PHP frameworks). PHP has a huge global name space that can be accessed from pretty much any place in the page creation process. Python, on the other hand, does not. Many of us consider this to be a Good Thing®.
However, there are times when you wish you had a few more globals for use in your templates. To accomplish this, what you want is a context processor. This is a routine that returns a dict that is automatically included whenever you use RequestContext() to build your call to your template.
You may also want to look at {% expr ... %}. It allows you to break out of the "chains" of the deliberately weak Django templating engine.
I am currently writing an application which I plan to sell as SaaS. Without giving away "secrets," I can say that it is basically a "document editing system" in which many users will be submitting documents.
The basic heirarchy is this:
Institution
Individual
Document
Sub-document
So each Individual should be able to BROWSE all documents that were submitted by anybody in their institution, but should only be able to EDIT documents that they created.
No individual should even be aware of the existence of another Institution--that should all be completely hidden.
I have written a Django/Python class that would facilitate this, but every document regarding authentication that I have read requires that I use the User object. Is this just a limitation of Django, or is there a way to do this?
If there is a way, how can I get my own "Individual" class details attached to the "request" objects so I can validate the things I should be showing the users?
What you're looking for is authorization, not authentication. Django's built-in authorization system is fairly crude, as you've discovered. You'll need something like django-authority if you want a more complete solution.
The auth module is typically used to cover authentication cases.
Gives you groups (Institutions), Users (Individuals) and permissions.
Using these features you can perform checking if a user is a member of a group or owns a doc before allowing them to see or edit the doc.
http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/auth/
If you need to go beyond the typical use case, supporting LDAP for example, then you can look at writing your own authentication backend.
http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/auth/#other-authentication-sources
In general, if you need to attach more information to the builtin User model, you would create new model which subclasses models.Model (not User), and identify it in settings as AUTH_PROFILE_MODULE. You can get the appropriate instance of your model from a user by calling user.get_profile(). (see http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/auth/#storing-additional-information-about-users).
This is generally useful for adding extra fields to User such as address, contact information, etc. While it would be possible to use this for your authentication needs, you'd most likely be better off using the built in groups, or a more comprehensive solution like django-authority as others have mentioned. I've included this answer only because it seems to be what you were asking for (a way to attach a class to User), but not really what you need (authorization).