Creating a List in python for Google App Engine - python

Before i go on, let me say that i have searched the Internet for clarification before i am asking it here.I have a class
class Course(ndb.model):
tutor = ndb.StringProperty(required=True)
...
and a Student class.
I want to include in the Course class a list of Students (represented by their id)registered on the course.From my search, i came across options like StringListProperty() from this website and class ListProperty(item_type, verbose_name=None, default=None, ...) from the Google tutorial on Types and Property Classes.I am still confused as to which is the right way to do this.I need a layman's explanation and possibly a guide to where i can find a tutorial with example.Thanks

You've got a bunch of options, but probably the most straight forward is to use a ndb.KeyProperty with repeated=True. The values will be the key of your particular student. e.g.:
class Student(ndb.Model):
name = ndb.StringProperty()
class Course(ndb.Model):
students = ndb.KeyProperty(repeated=True)
def create_course(students):
"""Create a new course object and return it.
Args:
students: iterable of `Student` model instances.
"""
c = Course()
c.students = [s.key for s in students]
return c

Related

Proper way to access nested foreignkey objects?

I have models with hierarchical relationships:
class School(models.Model):
name = models.CharField()
class Class(models.Model):
school = models.ForeignKey(School)
class Student(models.Model):
class = models.ForeignKey(Class)
And I'd like to retrieve every Student objects related to certain School.
I usually did it like below:
the_school = School.objects.get(name='Springfield Elementary School')
students = Student.objects.filter(class__school=the_school)
But this method needs two models to look up (School and Student) which seems somewhat unnecessary... For me.
So I tried to make a single line query, using Django's built in related manager:
students = School.objects.get(name='...').class_set.student_set.all()
# or
students = School.objects.get(name='...').class_set.all().student_set.all()
...which did not work.
How can I make a query referencing down from given School object?
Or is there any better solution?
You can use class__school__name as filter argument:
students = Student.objects.filter(class__school__name='Springfield Elementary School''Springfield Elementary School')

Going through list from class in python

For a school project I have to write a python program that records student records and display them.
My school said she wanted a class that represents the school register but I don't know understand how I do that.
I created the following:
class SchoolRegister:
def __init__(self):
ListOfPupils = {}
def REgisterPupil(self, lastname, firstname, schoolID):
ListOfPupils[schoolID] = (lastname, firstname)
sr = SchoolRegister()
sr.REgisterPupil("Thomas", "Lucy", 1)
sr.REgisterPupil("Percival", "Jenny", 2)
I would like to be go through list so I get list out:
1, Thomas, Lucy
2, Percival, Jenny
I searched and found a way of making class act as pupil list thingy, so I can do a for bod in sr but I don't understand it :(
This problem presents a platform upon which we can discuss some interesting Object Oriented programming concepts! We would ideally like to map the real world with code by creating models of the data that represent the real world. This is the inherit value that Object Oriented programming affords us.
Let's use your example.
Our focus is to be able to create records of students that exist (perhaps we should model a student and create parameters which define what a student means to us) and register (we would ideally like to be able to add and remove students from it and be able to retrieve the state of our student body) them in a central place that we can access.
So we can go ahead and implement a simple Student class that represents a student as far as we are concerned (hard to really quantify human beings on a few factors, so let's narrow our focus :D):
class Student:
def __init__(self, id, first_name, last_name):
self.id = id
self.first_name = first_name
self.last_name = last_name
We now have the ability to create objects that represent a student and store that information in a structured way. Now moving on to the the school register, let's think about what sort of data we need. How can we have full awareness of all of the students that exist? A likely data structure we could use could be a list! This grants us the option to (1) store all of the student's that exist (2) Maintain the order in which the student were inserted into the list (or perhaps enrolled at the school).
What if we want to be able to quickly access a Student object though? Perhaps we'd like to know more about a student in the register and we have access to their id. Well in that case we could use a dict which affords us easy student lookups using some sort of unique identifer (i.e. an id).
Let's go ahead and implement a simple example of that:
class SchoolRegister:
def __init__(self):
self.students = {}
def register_student(self, student):
self.students[student.id] = student
def get_student_by_id(self, id):
return self.students[id]
Now we can (1) create a Student, (2) add it to our records, (3) lookup that student information with a key (their id) as shown below:
school_register = SchoolRegister()
john_doe = Student(0, 'John', 'Doe')
school_register.register_student(john_doe)
school_register.get_student_by_id(0) # John Doe!
Suggested Readings:
Classes in Python
What is object oriented programming?

How to check for a specific field change in a model?

I have my models.py :
class Hotel(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=20)
currency = models.ForeignKey(Currency)
class Currency(models.Mode):
code = models.CharField(max_length=3)
name = models.CharField(max_length=10)
Whenever the currency field in hotel is changing I need to be able to do something. So I have a function like :
#receiver(pre_save,sender=Hotel)
def update_something(sender,**kwargs)
obj = kwargs['instance']
old_object = Hotel.objects.get(pk=obj.pk)
'''
Now I can do anything here comparing the oldo object with the instance
'''
The thing is I don't want to make a query for this, since then the purpose of signals becomes stupid and I become a fool.
So I should be able to do something like :
updated = kwargs['update_fields']
new_currency = updated['currency']
Is their a way I can find out that change for ONLY one particular field say currency ,instead of doing a query like this. I want to get the changes related to the currency foreign key and update things before I save.
Sorry for my bad English and not being able to use too technical terms.
Thanks :)
Rather hacky solution is to save object state on initialization.
from django.forms.models import model_to_dict
class Currency(models.Mode):
code = models.CharField(max_length=3)
name = models.CharField(max_length=10)
def __init__(self):
super(Currency, self).__init__()
self.__state = model_to_dict(self)
def updated(self):
new_state = model_to_dict(self)
return dict(set(self.__state.iteritems()) - set(new_state.iteritems()))
Method updated will return difference between initial and new states.
The point of signals is better decoupling - allow other applications (that you don't necessarily know yet) to transparently hook into your application and/or avoid circular dependencies between application. There's really no point in using a signal here afaik (unless of course the signal handler is in another app and you don't want the app with the Hotel and Currency models to depend on this other app).
To answer your question: doing a query to retrieve the original state is the only way you can compare stored value and current value. Now if you're only interested in one specific field, you of course don't have to retrieve the whole model instance - just use queryset.values_list:
old_currency = Hotel.objects.filter(pk=obj.pk).values_list("currency", flat=True)[0]

ForeignKey to abstract class (generic relations)

I'm building a personal project with Django, to train myself (because I love Django, but I miss skills). I have the basic requirements, I know Python, I carefully read the Django book twice if not thrice.
My goal is to create a simple monitoring service, with a Django-based web interface allowing me to check status of my "nodes" (servers). Each node has multiple "services". The application checks the availability of each service for each node.
My problem is that I have no idea how to represent different types of services in my database. I thought of two "solutions" :
single service model, with a "serviceType" field, and a big mess with the fields. (I have no great experience in database modeling, but this looks... "bad" to me)
multiple service models. i like this solution, but then I have no idea how I can reference these DIFFERENT services in the same field.
This is a short excerpt from my models.py file : (I removed everything that is not related to this problem)
from django.db import models
# Create your models here.
class service(models.Model):
port = models.PositiveIntegerField()
class Meta:
abstract = True
class sshService(service):
username = models.CharField(max_length=64)
pkey = models.TextField()
class telnetService(service):
username = models.CharField(max_length=64)
password = models.CharField(max_length=64)
class genericTcpService(service):
pass
class genericUdpService(service):
pass
class node(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=64)
# various fields
services = models.ManyToManyField(service)
Of course, the line with the ManyToManyField is bogus. I have no idea what to put in place of "*Service". I honestly searched for solutions about this, I heard of "generic relations", triple-join tables, but I did'nt really understand these things.
Moreover, English is not my native language, so coming to database structure and semantics, my knowledge and understanding of what I read is limited (but that's my problem)
For a start, use Django's multi-table inheritance, rather than the abstract model you have currently.
Your code would then become:
from django.db import models
class Service(models.Model):
port = models.PositiveIntegerField()
class SSHService(Service):
username = models.CharField(max_length=64)
pkey = models.TextField()
class TelnetService(Service):
username = models.CharField(max_length=64)
password = models.CharField(max_length=64)
class GenericTcpService(Service):
pass
class GenericUDPService(Service):
pass
class Node(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=64)
# various fields
services = models.ManyToManyField(Service)
On the database level, this will create a 'service' table, the rows of which will be linked via one to one relationships with separate tables for each child service.
The only difficulty with this approach is that when you do something like the following:
node = Node.objects.get(pk=node_id)
for service in node.services.all():
# Do something with the service
The 'service' objects you access in the loop will be of the parent type.
If you know what child type these will have beforehand, you can just access the child class in the following way:
from django.core.exceptions import ObjectDoesNotExist
try:
telnet_service = service.telnetservice
except (AttributeError, ObjectDoesNotExist):
# You chose the wrong child type!
telnet_service = None
If you don't know the child type beforehand, it gets a bit trickier. There are a few hacky/messy solutions, including a 'serviceType' field on the parent model, but a better way, as Joe J mentioned, is to use a 'subclassing queryset'. The InheritanceManager class from django-model-utils is probably the easiest to use. Read the documentation for it here, it's a really nice little bit of code.
I think one approach that you might consider is a "subclassing queryset". Basically, it allows you to query the parent model and it will return instances of the child models in the result queryset. It would let you do queries like:
models.service.objects.all()
and have it return to you results like the following:
[ <sshServiceInstance>, <telnetServiceInstance>, <telnetServiceInstance>, ...]
For some examples on how to do this, check out the links on the blog post linked below.
http://jazstudios.blogspot.com/2009/10/django-model-inheritance-with.html
However, if you use this approach, you shouldn't declare your service model as abstract as you do in the example. Granted, you will be introducing an extra join, but overall I've found the subclassing queryset to work pretty well for returning a mixed set of objects in a queryset.
Anyway, hope this helps,
Joe
If you are looking for generic foreign key relations you should check the Django contenttypes framework (built into Django). The docs pretty much explain how to use it and how to work with generic relations.
An actual service can only be on one node, right? In that case when not have a field
node = models.ForeignKey('node', related_name='services')
in the service class?

modelling the google datastore/python

Hi I am trying to build an application which has models resembling something like the below ones:-(While it would be easy to merge the two models into one and use them , but that is not feasible in the actual app)
class User(db.Model):
username=db.StringProperty()
email=db.StringProperty()
class UserLikes(db.Model):
username=db.StringProperty()
food=db.StringProperty()
The objective- The user after logging in enters the food that he likes and the app in turn returns all the other users who like that food.
Now suppose a user Alice enters that she likes "Pizzas" , it gets stored in the datastore. She logs out and logs in again.At this point we query the datastore for the food that she likes and then query again for all users who like that food. This as you see are two datastore queries which is not the best way. I am sure there would definitely be a better way to do this. Can someone please help.
[Update:-Or can something like this be done that I change the second model such that usernames become a multivalued property in which all the users that like that food can be stored.. however I am a little unclear here]
[Edit:-Hi Thanks for replying but I found both the solutions below a bit of a overkill here. I tried doing it like below.Request you to have a look at this and kindly advice. I maintained the same two tables,however changed them like below:-
class User(db.Model):
username=db.StringProperty()
email=db.StringProperty()
class UserLikes(db.Model):
username=db.ListProperty(basestring)
food=db.StringProperty()
Now when 2 users update same food they like, it gets stored like
'pizza' ----> 'Alice','Bob'
And my db query to retrieve data becomes quite easy here
query=db.Query(UserLikes).filter('username =','Alice').get()
which I can then iterate over as something like
for elem in query.username:
print elem
Now if there are two foods like below:-
'pizza' ----> 'Alice','Bob'
'bacon'----->'Alice','Fred'
I use the same query as above , and iterate over the queries and then the usernames.
I am quite new to this , to realize that this just might be wrong. Please Suggest!
Beside the relation model you have, you could handle this in two other ways depending on your exact use case. You have a good idea in your update, use a ListProperty. Check out Brett Slatkin's taslk on Relation Indexes for some background.
You could use a child entity (Relation Index) on user that contains a list of foods:
class UserLikes(db.Model):
food = db.StringListProperty()
Then when you are creating a UserLikes instance, you will define the user it relates to as the parent:
likes = UserLikes(parent=user)
That lets you query for other users who like a particular food nicely:
like_apples_keys = UserLikes.all(keys_only=True).filter(food='apples')
user_keys = [key.parent() for key in like_apples_keys]
users_who_like_apples = db.get(user_keys)
However, what may suit your application better, would be to make the Relation a child of a food:
class WhoLikes(db.Model):
users = db.StringListProperty()
Set the key_name to the name of the food when creating the like:
food_i_like = WhoLikes(key_name='apples')
Now, to get all users who like apples:
apple_lover_key_names = WhoLikes.get_by_key_name('apples')
apple_lovers = UserModel.get_by_key_names(apple_lover_key_names.users)
To get all users who like the same stuff as a user:
same_likes = WhoLikes.all().filter('users', current_user_key_name)
like_the_same_keys = set()
for keys in same_likes:
like_the_same_keys.union(keys.users)
same_like_users = UserModel.get_by_key_names(like_the_same_keys)
If you will have lots of likes, or lots users with the same likes, you will need to make some adjustments to the process. You won't be able to fetch 1,000s of users.
Food and User relation is a so called Many-to-Many relationship tipically handled with a Join table; in this case a db.Model that links User and Food.
Something like this:
class User(db.Model):
name = db.StringProperty()
def get_food_I_like(self):
return (entity.name for entity in self.foods)
class Food(db.Model):
name = db.StringProperty()
def get_users_who_like_me(self):
return (entity.name for entity in self.users)
class UserFood(db.Model):
user= db.ReferenceProperty(User, collection_name='foods')
food = db.ReferenceProperty(Food, collection_name='users')
For a given User's entity you could retrieve preferred food with:
userXXX.get_food_I_like()
For a given Food's entity, you could retrieve users that like that food with:
foodYYY.get_users_who_like_me()
There's also another approach to handle many to many relationship storing a list of keys inside a db.ListProperty().
class Food(db.Model):
name = db.StringProperty()
class User(db.Model):
name = db.StringProperty()
food = db.ListProperty(db.Key)
Remember that ListProperty is limited to 5.000 keys or again, you can't add useful properties that would fit perfectly in the join table (ex: a number of stars representing how much a User likes a Food).

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