Does anyone know a clever way, in Google App Engine, to return a wrapped Model instance that only exposes a few of the original properties, and does not allow saving the instance back to the datastore?
I'm not looking for ways of actually enforcing these rules, obviously it'll still be possible to change the instance by digging through its __dict__ etc. I just want a way to avoid accidental exposure/changing of data.
My initial thought was to do this (I want to do this for a public version of a User model):
class PublicUser(db.Model):
display_name = db.StringProperty()
#classmethod
def kind(cls):
return 'User'
def put(self):
raise SomeError()
Unfortunately, GAE maps the kind to a class early on, so if I do PublicUser.get_by_id(1) I will actually get a User instance back, not a PublicUser instance.
Also, the idea is that it should at least appear to be a Model instance so that I can pass it around to code that does not know about the fact that it is a "dumbed-down" version. Ultimately I want to do this so that I can use my generic data exposure functions on the read-only version, so that they only expose public information about the user.
Update
I went with icio's solution. Here's the code I wrote for copying the properties from the User instance over to a PublicUser instance:
class User(db.Model):
# ...
# code
# ...
def as_public(self):
"""Returns a PublicUser version of this object.
"""
props = self.properties()
pu = PublicUser()
for prop in pu.properties().values():
# Only copy properties that exist for both the PublicUser model and
# the User model.
if prop.name in props:
# This line of code sets the property of the PublicUser
# instance to the value of the same property on the User
# instance.
prop.__set__(pu, props[prop.name].__get__(self, type(self)))
return pu
Please comment if this isn't a good way of doing it.
Could you not create a method within your User class which instantiates a ReadOnlyUser object and copies the values of member variables over as appropriate? Your call would be something like User.get_by_id(1).readonly() with the readonly method defined in the following form:
class User(db.Model):
def readonly(self):
return ReadOnlyUser(self.name, self.id);
Or you could perhaps have your User class extend another class with methods to do this automatically based on some static vars listing properties to copy over, or something.
P.S. I don't code in Python
Related
I have a model A and want to make subclasses of it.
class A(models.Model):
type = models.ForeignKey(Type)
data = models.JSONField()
def compute():
pass
class B(A):
def compute():
df = self.go_get_data()
self.data = self.process(df)
class C(A):
def compute():
df = self.go_get_other_data()
self.data = self.process_another_way(df)
# ... other subclasses of A
B and C should not have their own tables, so I decided to use the proxy attirbute of Meta. However, I want there to be a table of all the implemented proxies.
In particular, I want to keep a record of the name and description of each subclass.
For example, for B, the name would be "B" and the description would be the docstring for B.
So I made another model:
class Type(models.Model):
# The name of the class
name = models.String()
# The docstring of the class
desc = models.String()
# A unique identifier, different from the Django ID,
# that allows for smoothly changing the name of the class
identifier = models.Int()
Now, I want it so when I create an A, I can only choose between the different subclasses of A.
Hence the Type table should always be up-to-date.
For example, if I want to unit-test the behavior of B, I'll need to use the corresponding Type instance to create an instance of B, so that Type instance already needs to be in the database.
Looking over on the Django website, I see two ways to achieve this: fixtures and data migrations.
Fixtures aren't dynamic enough for my usecase, since the attributes literally come from the code. That leaves me with data migrations.
I tried writing one, that goes something like this:
def update_results(apps, schema_editor):
A = apps.get_model("app", "A")
Type = apps.get_model("app", "Type")
subclasses = get_all_subclasses(A)
for cls in subclasses:
id = cls.get_identifier()
Type.objects.update_or_create(
identifier=id,
defaults=dict(name=cls.__name__, desc=cls.__desc__)
)
class Migration(migrations.Migration):
operations = [
RunPython(update_results)
]
# ... other stuff
The problem is, I don't see how to store the identifier within the class, so that the Django Model instance can recover it.
So far, here is what I have tried:
I have tried using the fairly new __init_subclass__ construct of Python. So my code now looks like:
class A:
def __init_subclass__(cls, identifier=None, **kwargs):
super().__init_subclass__(**kwargs)
if identifier is None:
raise ValueError()
cls.identifier = identifier
Type.objects.update_or_create(
identifier=identifier,
defaults=dict(name=cls.__name__, desc=cls.__doc__)
)
# ... the rest of A
# The identifier should never change, so that even if the
# name of the class changes, we still know which subclass is referred to
class B(A, identifier=3):
# ... the rest of B
But this update_or_create fails when the database is new (e.g. during unit tests), because the Type table does not exist.
When I have this problem in development (we're still in early stages so deleting the DB is still sensible), I have to go
comment out the update_or_create in __init_subclass__. I can then migrate and put it back in.
Of course, this solution is also not great because __init_subclass__ is run way more than necessary. Ideally this machinery would only happen at migration.
So there you have it! I hope the problem statement makes sense.
Thanks for reading this far and I look forward to hearing from you; even if you have other things to do, I wish you a good rest of your day :)
With a little help from Django-expert friends, I solved this with the post_migrate signal.
I removed the update_or_create in __init_subclass, and in project/app/apps.py I added:
from django.apps import AppConfig
from django.db.models.signals import post_migrate
def get_all_subclasses(cls):
"""Get all subclasses of a class, recursively.
Used to get a list of all the implemented As.
"""
all_subclasses = []
for subclass in cls.__subclasses__():
all_subclasses.append(subclass)
all_subclasses.extend(get_all_subclasses(subclass))
return all_subclasses
def update_As(sender=None, **kwargs):
"""Get a list of all implemented As and write them in the database.
More precisely, each model is used to instantiate a Type, which will be used to identify As.
"""
from app.models import A, Type
subclasses = get_all_subclasses(A)
for cls in subclasses:
id = cls.identifier
Type.objects.update_or_create(identifier=id, defaults=dict(name=cls.__name__, desc=cls.__doc__))
class MyAppConfig(AppConfig):
default_auto_field = "django.db.models.BigAutoField"
name = "app"
def ready(self):
post_migrate.connect(update_As, sender=self)
Hope this is helpful for future Django coders in need!
I have a class with a reference field on itself, because some users in my app can have sub users that are kinda like employees. I defined my Document this way:
class User(Document):
__parent = ReferenceField('self', db_field='parent')
I tried to define a property inside my User model to retrieve the parent from inside the class but I haven't managed to make it work. I've read the documentation on Default Document Queries and have tried using queryset_manager decorator and then calling that function from my property but when I try that I get an error saying that 'QuerySetManager is not callable'.
Basically what I want to do is making the property return a User instance containing the parent of the child that is calling. I hope this can help visualize it.
#property
def get_parent(self):
return self.objects(id=self.__parent).get()
I want to have a base class called MBUser that has some predefined properties, ones that I don't want to be changed. If the client wants to add properties to MBUser, it is advised that MBUser be subclassed, and any additional properties be put in there.
The API code won't know if the client actually subclasses MBUser or not, but it shouldn't matter. The thinking went that we could just get MBUser by id. So I expected this to work:
def test_CreateNSUser_FetchMBUser(self):
from nsuser import NSUser
id = create_unique_id()
user = NSUser(id = id)
user.put()
# changing MBUser.get.. to NSUser.get makes this test succeed
get_user = MBUser.get_by_id(id)
self.assertIsNotNone(get_user)
Here NSUser is a subclass of MBUser. The test fails.
Why can't I do this?
What's a work around?
Models are defined by their "kind", and a subclass is a different kind, even if it seems the same.
The point of subclassing is not to share values, but to share the "schema" you've created for a given "kind".
A kind map is created on base class ndb.Model (it seems like you're using ndb since you mentioned get_by_id) and each kind is looked up when you do queries like this.
For subclasses, the kind is just defined as the class name:
#classmethod
def _get_kind(cls):
return cls.__name__
I just discovered GAE has a solution for this. It's called the PolyModel:
https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/python/ndb/polymodelclass
Given a form class (somewhere deep in your giant Django app)..
class ContactForm(forms.Form):
name = ...
surname = ...
And considering you want to add another field to this form without extending or modifying the form class itself, why does not the following approach work?
ContactForm.another_field = forms.CharField(...)
(My first guess is that the metaclass hackery that Django uses applies only the first time the form class is constructed. If so, would there be a way to redeclare the class to overcome this?)
Some pertinent definitions occur in django/forms/forms.py. They are:
class BaseForm
class Form
class DeclarativeFieldsMetaclass
def get_declared_fields
get_declared_fields is called from DeclarativeFieldsMetaclass and constructs a list with the field instances sorted by their creation counter. It then prepends fields from the base classes to this list and returns the result as an OrderedDict instance with the field name serving as the keys. DeclarativeFieldsMetaclass then sticks this value in the attribute base_fields and calls to type to construct the class. It then passes the class to the media_property function in widgets.py and attaches the return value to the media attribute on the new class.
media_property returns a property method that reconstructs the media declarations on every access. My feeling is that it wont be relevant here but I could be wrong.
At any rate, if you are not declaring a Media attribute (and none of the base classes do) then it only returns a fresh Media instance with no arguments to the constructor and I think that monkeypatching a new field on should be as simple as manually inserting the field into base_fields.
ContactForm.another_field = forms.CharField(...)
ContactForm.base_fields['another_field'] = ContactForm.another_field
Each form instance then gets a deepcopy of base_fields that becomes form_instance.fields in the __init__ method of BaseForm. HTH.
Been trying to figure this out for a couple of hours now and have gotten nowhere.
class other(models.Model):
user = models.ForeignKey(User)
others = other.objects.all()
o = others[0]
At this point the ORM has not asked for the o.user object, but if I do ANYTHING that touches that object, it loads it from the database.
type(o.user)
will cause a load from the database.
What I want to understand is HOW they do this magic. What is the pythonic pixie dust that causes it to happen. Yes, I have looked at the source, I'm stumped.
Django uses a metaclass (django.db.models.base.ModelBase) to customize the creation of model classes. For each object defined as a class attribute on the model (user is the one we care about here), Django first looks to see if it defines a contribute_to_class method. If the method is defined, Django calls it, allowing the object to customize the model class as it's being created. If the object doesn't define contribute_to_class, it is simply assigned to the class using setattr.
Since ForeignKey is a Django model field, it defines contribute_to_class. When the ModelBase metaclass calls ForeignKey.contribute_to_class, the value assigned to ModelClass.user is an instance of django.db.models.fields.related.ReverseSingleRelatedObjectDescriptor.
ReverseSingleRelatedObjectDescriptor is an object that implements Python's descriptor protocol in order to customize what happens when an instance of the class is accessed as an attribute of another class. In this case, the descriptor is used to lazily load and return the related model instance from the database the first time it is accessed.
# make a user and an instance of our model
>>> user = User(username="example")
>>> my_instance = MyModel(user=user)
# user is a ReverseSingleRelatedObjectDescriptor
>>> MyModel.user
<django.db.models.fields.related.ReverseSingleRelatedObjectDescriptor object>
# user hasn't been loaded, yet
>>> my_instance._user_cache
AttributeError: 'MyModel' object has no attribute '_user_cache'
# ReverseSingleRelatedObjectDescriptor.__get__ loads the user
>>> my_instance.user
<User: example>
# now the user is cached and won't be looked up again
>>> my_instance._user_cache
<User: example>
The ReverseSingleRelatedObjectDescriptor.__get__ method is called every time the user attribute is accessed on the model instance, but it's smart enough to only look up the related object once and then return a cached version on subsequent calls.
This will not explain how exactly Django goes about it, but what you are seeing is Lazy Loading in action. Lazy Loading is a well known design pattern to defer the initialization of objects right up until the point they are needed. In your case until either of o = others[0] or type(o.user) is executed. This Wikipedia article may give you some insights into the process.
Properties can be used to implement this behaviour. Basically, your class definition will generate a class similar to the following:
class other(models.Model):
def _get_user(self):
## o.users being accessed
return User.objects.get(other_id=self.id)
def _set_user(self, v):
## ...
user = property(_get_user, _set_user)
The query on User will not be performed until you access the .user of an 'other' instance.