django-subatomic 0.1.1

Fine-grained database transaction control for Django.

Django Subatomic

Precise control over transaction logic in Django.

Splits Django's atomic into a suite of more specific utilities.

Prerequisites

This package supports sensible combinations of:

• Python 3.12, 3.13, 3.14.
• Django 4.2, 5.1, 5.2.

Installation

pip install django-subatomic

Usage

N.B. These docs are incomplete. More comprehensive documentation covering the usage of this library and guidance for migrating to it, will be published soon.

django-subatomic provides drop-in replacements for django.db.transaction.atomic that make behaviour more explicit and allow conditions to be expressed without side-effects.

django-subatomic does 3 things:

• make transactional behaviour explicit;
• express conditions without side-effects;
• make tests more realistic.

Make transactional behaviour explicit

django.db.transaction.atomic

Django's transaction.atomic can do multiple things in several combinations:

• open a transaction
  • optionally: error if one is already open
• create a savepoint within a transaction
• nothing

Some of those behaviours can be chosen with the durable and savepoint arguments. But, it is not always possible to know what it does without knowing the context in which it is being called.

django-subatomic provides utilities that can be used in place of atomic that each do a specific job:

• transaction opens a new transaction
  • it will error if one is already open;
• savepoint will create a savepoint
  • it will error if there is no transaction open.

django.db.transaction.on_commit

Django's on_commit also behaves differently depending on the context in which it is called. If called in a transaction, it registers a callback to be executed when the transaction commits. If called with no transaction, it executes the callback immediately.

django-subatomic provides a utility to register on-commit callbacks, which fails if there is no transaction to be committed. This makes the behaviour more obvious for a reader and interacts more reliably with testcase transactions (see "Make tests more realistic" below).

Express conditions without side-effects

Sometimes, code needs to be "atomic", i.e. it contains multiple database operations that must either all be committed, or all be rolled back. It is not possible to enforce that condition independently from managing transactions using Django's atomic. (atomic(savepoint=False) will never create a savepoint, but it might start a new transaction.)

Other times, code needs to be "durable", i.e. any changes that have been made inside it must persist (or be rolled back) once the function returns. There is no way to express this condition with Django's atomic that doesn't also open a new transaction (which is often exactly what we don't want!)

django-subatomic provides two utilities that allow these conditions to be expressed without creating transactions or savepoints:

• transaction_required will ensure a transaction has been opened without creating a savepoint or opening the transaction itself;
• durable will ensure a transaction is not currently open, without opening one itself.

Make tests more realistic

Tests are often wrapped in a transaction. to speed up database use. This "testcase transaction" causes Django's atomic to behave completely differently in tests than it will in regular use.

For example, if a particular call to atomic would usually always open a transaction, e.g. if it were called in a Django view handler function, in a test it would create a savepoint! If it used savepoint=False it would do nothing at all!

This causes the tests to differ significantly from real-world usage, which can lead to tests that do not test the behaviour they want to. This is particularly relevant when on-commit callbacks are involved. In the example above, on-commit callbacks registered during the transaction would usually be executed when the transaction ended in the view function. But, in a test, the transaction is never committed, so the callbacks are never executed! That means the behaviour observed in the test does not match the behaviour of the code in real life.

The utilities for managing transactions in django-subatomic emulate real-world behaviour for on-commit callbacks, ensuring the testcase transaction does not supress on-commit callbacks. That makes tests of code that use those utilities more realistic and helps to avoid bugs sneaking through automated tests.