I have a settings object that contains some generic settings. These settings will change for each user. I'm wondering what would be the best way to code this. My current method is this:
class Settings(object):
def __init__(self, user=None):
if user and not isinstance(user, users.User):
raise TypeError('must be a User object')
self.user = user
#property
def title(self):
if self.user:
return 'user setting'
return 'generic setting'
Given that there will be a few methods in Settings, having to run that if statement each time kinda sucks.
I was considering having a UserSettings class that extends Settings to override the defaults and provide the user specific settings. Though, I've heard that overriding methods is bad OOP design. Which leads me to option 2...
I then thought of creating UserSettings but it won't extend Settings. It'll instead wrap it and I'll have something like:
class UserSettings(object):
def __init__(self, user=None):
if user and not isinstance(user, users.User):
raise TypeError('must be a User object')
self.user = user
self.settings = Settings()
#property
def title(self):
return 'user setting'
So I can then do:
print user_settings.title # get the user title
print user_settings.settings.title # get the generic title
How should I code this?
Overriding methods is not only not bad OOP design, it's the basis for subtype polymorphism, which is core to OOP, and a common way to get rid of the need for such conditional checks.
There are certainly times when you should prefer composition to inheritance, but it's not clear from your description that there's anything wrong with making this a subclass.
Related
For many - but not all - of my views I have to do some validation to make sure the user that is logged in has access to the object they are trying to access. For 30+ views I have this code:
def whatever_view_name(request, id, access_id):
check = Access.objects.filter(user=request.user, id=access_id)
if check:
access_object = check[0]
else:
return redirect(reverse("create_new_access_object"))
.... and now my view-specific code will follow ...
So I need to check if a particular database record (Access) exists for this particular user. This code is repeated a lot, which does not seem to be right. I've been thinking about using middleware, but there are two problems: a) I need to use this object in the view (see variable access_object so I fear I'd have to query it twice if I put it in the middleware), and b) I don't need to do this ALWAYS so I wonder how to only run it for some views and not all if this is middleware.
Any thoughts?
You can write a decorator for this:
from functools import wraps
def check_access(function):
#wraps(function)
def wrap(request, id, access_id, *args, **kwargs):
check = Access.objects.filter(user=request.user, id=access_id)
if check.exists():
return function(request, id, access_id, *args, **kwargs)
else:
return redirect(reverse("create_new_access_object"))
return wrap
# usage
#check_access
def whatever_view_name(request, id, access_id):
return ...
One way that I can think of is using inheritance. We can refactor out the common stuff into a super view class and then extend the same in child view classes.
Something like this :
We can have a super class like this
class AccessVerifiedView(View):
def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
check = Access.objects.filter(user=request.user, id=kwargs["access_id"])
if check:
access_object = check[0]
self.verified_get(access_object)
else:
return redirect(reverse("create_new_access_object"))
def verified_get(self, access_object):
raise NotImplementedError
Then we can extend that class and the use in our views.
class MyView(AccessVerifiedView):
def verified_get(self, access_object):
return access_object
This approach see bit more readable. Anyone seeing the code can see the super class and understand the code flow.
Other few ways to do it is
Decorator : We can have a decorator which will do the same thing. And then we can decorate the view which we want to verify.
I have a class based view that I need to inherit from another class if a site setting is set to true. I've done a fair bit of googling on python dynamic inheritance but haven't found anything that I could understand or that seemed appropriate. FYI: my python knowledge is far from extensive so this could be a very un-pythonic thing to do for all I know.
Here is some pseudocode to outline what I mean:
Class MyView(View):
If settings.IMPLEMENTS_ACTIVITY:
Set MyView implements activity
I hope that helps explain what I mean. Maybe someone could point me in the right direction?
class View1(View):
pass
class View2(View1):
def sepcific_view2_activity(self):
pass
if settings.IMPLEMENTS_ACTIVITY:
MyView = View1
else:
MyView = View2
I'd rather make a call to another class method than change inheritance:
Class MyView(View):
def get(request):
If settings.IMPLEMENTS_ACTIVITY:
return CoolView1().get(request)
else:
return CoolView2().get(request)
Class CoolView1(View):
def get(request):
return 1
Class CoolView2(View):
def get(request):
return 2
I have a UserModel class that will essentially do everything like login and update things.
I'm trying to pass the instance of itself (the full class) as an argument to another function of another class.
For example: (obviously not the code, but you get the idea)
from Car import CarFactory
class UserModel:
def __init__(self,username):
self.username = username
def settings(self,colour,age,height):
return {'colour':colour,'age':age,'height':height}
def updateCar(self,car_id):
c = CarFactory(car_id, <<this UserModel instance>>)
So, as you can see from the very last line above I would like to pass an instance of UserModel to the CarData class, so when within the CarData class I can access the UserModel.settings(), however, I am unsure of the syntax. I could of course just do:
c = CarFactory(car_id,self.settings)
Any help would be grateful appreciated.
Thanks
c = CarFactory(car_id, self)
doesnt work?
on a side note it would be self.settings() not self.settings ... unless you define settings to be a property
I extend default model manager and add cache-specific logic to it:
class ReadOnlyManager(manager.Manager):
use_for_related_fields = True
def create(self, **kwargs):
obj = super(ReadOnlyManager, self).create(**kwargs)
cache.cache_read_only_object(obj)
...
return obj
def update(self, *args, **kwargs):
raise ReadOnlyException()
def by_id(self, object_id):
return cache.retrieve_read_only_object(self.model, object_id)
def by_lookup(self, lookup_key, lookup_value):
return cache.retrieve_read_only_object_by_lookup(self.model, lookup_key, lookup_value)
Then I created abstract model that uses it:
class ReadOnlyModel(models.Model):
class Meta:
abstract = True
objects = ReadOnlyManager()
I use it in concrete model:
class TokenType(ReadOnlyModel):
code = models.CharField(_('code'), max_length=30, unique=True)
description = models.CharField(_('description'), max_length=100)
lookups = {
'code': 'code'
}
When I tried to call method specific for custom cache, for example *by_id*:
TokenType.objects.by_id(1) # This code works
PyCharm highlights it and writes "Unresolved attribute reference" warning. When I press CMD+Space after TokenType., I see, that autocomplete box contains two objects items: one marked with function icon and have type ReadOnlyManager, second - with method icon and have type Manager.
Is it PyCharm bug? How to enable autocomlete for additional methods in custom manager?
This seems to be a problem of PyCharm. Writing an auto completion for Python is really a hard task, especially for things like Django Models, which uses Meta Classes and other nasty stuff.
However it is possible to complete, and it seems not so difficult, for your example my autocompletion ( https://github.com/davidhalter/jedi/tree/dev, work in progress, don't use it yet) is able to complete it:
Completing TokenType.objects. :
update
by_id
by_lookup
create
use_for_related_fields
Completing TokenType.:
__metaclass__
__hash__
_get_next_or_previous_in_order
__ne__
date_error_message
description
_perform_date_checks
delete
clean
objects
unique_error_message
_set_pk_val
_deferred
save_base
pk
serializable_value
full_clean
__init__
code
save
__str__
validate_unique
clean_fields
__repr__
_perform_unique_checks
__reduce__
_get_unique_checks
prepare_database_save
_get_pk_val
__eq__
lookups
_get_next_or_previous_by_FIELD
Meta
_get_FIELD_display
As far as I'm concerned, PyCharm is Closed Source, so I think you'll have to talk to the PyCharm developers.
My application uses class inheritance to minimize repetition across my models. My models.py looks kind of like this:
class BaseModel(models.Model):
title = models.CharField(max_length=100)
pub_date = models.DateField()
class Child(BaseModel):
foo = models.CharField(max_length=20)
class SecondChild(BaseModel):
bar = models.CharField(max_length=20)
Now most of the time, my views and templates only deal with instances of Child or SecondChild. Once in a while, however, I have a situation where I have an instance of BaseModel, and need to figure out which class is inheriting from that instance.
Given an instance of BaseModel, let's call it base, Django's ORM offers base.child and base.secondchild. Currently, I have a method that loops through all of them to figure it out. It would look something like this:
class BaseModel(models.Model):
...
def get_absolute_url(self):
url = None
try:
self.child
url = self.child.get_absolute_url()
except Child.DoesNotExist:
pass
if not url:
try:
self.secondchild
url = self.secondchild.get_absolute_url()
except SecondChild.DoesNotExist:
pass
if not url:
url = '/base/%i' % self.id
return url
That is hopelessly ugly, and gets uglier with every additional child class I have. Does anybody have any ideas on a better, more pythonic way to go about this?
Various forms of this question pop up here regularly. This answer demonstrates a generic way to "cast" a parent type to its proper subtype without having to query every subtype table. That way you wouldn't need to define a monster get_absolute_url on the parent which covers all the cases, you'd just convert to the child type and call get_absolute_url normally.
I haven't messed with Django inheitance much, so I suppose you can't override get_absolute_url() in the model classes?
Perhaps the visitor pattern could help if there are lot of functions that need this in many different places.
I haven't tested this, but it might be worth tinkering with:
def get_absolute_url(self):
subclasses = ('child', 'secondchild', )
for subclass in subclasses:
if hasattr(self, subclass):
return getattr(self, subclass).get_absolute_url()
return '/base/%i' % self.id