gestore 0.1.0.dev2

Django object management

gestore

Django object management

“gestore” just means “manager” in Italian.

A set of tools that will help you to

• Export objects and all other objects related to it.
• Import exported objects back.
• Delete objects and all other objects related to it entirely from database.

Note

Object Import/Delete are not production ready. Use with caution

Why using this tool

This idea came out of Appsembler Multi Cluster UI/UX Workflows.This tool is very useful for supporting multiple clusters, there are other reasons why having robust Export/Import/Delete functionality on your app would be highly beneficial:

• Frees your site from lots of data you are not using. It's a great idea to export such data to a file system which can be imported later.
• Decreases the overhead for data tools.
• Removes old data, to keep your costs down and improve performance of aggregation functions (e.g. data pipelines)
• Deletes old objects as customers churn.
• Data export is very useful for GDPR reasons
• Some customers want their data now for DR (disaster recovery) reasons, not because they’re churning.
• If you are strongly motivated to create a separate cluster for data that already exists on a current one.
• Lowers the risk of objects (e.g. trial users) being able to crack your site isolation and access data from paying customers.

Get started

Not implemented yet

How it works?

This tool uses BFS to explore all objects in the DB from the given one. In the following GIF, let's assume you want to export object number 3, gestore will fetch its data and process all the objects its connected to, so that when you import them back again, data will be fully functional

Export functionality

This will help you exporting all object-related data once triggered. For every model being processed, we get its data, and the data of its keys; (Foreign, ManyToMany, OneToOne) until we reach a base model that's not connected to any other model. If the key of any of these related fields is None, then we hit a leaf node.

We use a BFS technique to scrape data element by element from the database until we hit a leaf node that doesn't have any relations. For each processed object, we store its data, and add its children's data.

Command Usage

python manage.py exportobjects [-d] [-o OUTPUT] objects

Objects is a list of objects to be exported. Each of these arguments must match the following syntax: <app_id>.<Model>.<object_id>

Example

python manage.py exportobjects auth.User.10 demoapp.Book.4 -o /path/to/exp.json

Command Arguments

• objects. The main argument of the exportobjects. Its representation is described above.
• --debug flag is optional, use it to prevent any file writing. This is helpful in case you want to see the JSON output of the data before writining it on your system.
• --output is an optional argument that takes a path string of the location in which you want to store the exprts file.

Import functionality

• Will not commit changes if something went wrong

Command Usage

python manage.py importobjects [-d] [-o] path

Example

python manage.py importobjects /path/to/exp.json

Command Arguments

• path. The main argument of the importobjects. It should point to an export file on you local system.
• --debug performs a dry run. Will not commit or save any changes to the DB.
• --override DANGEROUS. A flag that will tell the command to override objects in the DB with the ones being imported in case of a conflict.

Delete functionality

Not implemented yet.

Demo app

This app is created for the sole purpose of testing and visualising the manager commands in action. No other functionality is expected out of this app.

Challenges

• Platform state: When exporting data from your project, it's assumed that importing it back will take place in the same project with the same datastructures. If you upgrade a library that you're using its models, and these models were changed (fields removed, added, type changed) you are going to face some problems.
• Object conflicts
  • Some data like usernames are unique cluster wide, if we’re importing such data from another cluster, some could be duplicated or overridden.
  • Some exported objects might have a similar ID to a totally different object in the database, this tool will flag these objects for you so you know what to change and what to override.

Reporting Security Issues

Please do not report security issues in public. Email us on [e-mail].