half-orm 0.8.0rc0

A simple PostgreSQL to Python mapper.

A simple PostgreSQL to Python mapper.

You have a PostgreSQL database at hand and you want to interact with it in Python; half_orm maps your tables and views to Python classes that you can easily use to manipulate your data.

The 'half' part of half_orm name indicates that it only deals with the data manipulation language (DML) part of SQL. Basically the INSERT, SELECT, UPDATE and DELETE commands. This is what makes half_orm so easy to learn an use.

Here is what coding with half_orm looks like :

from half_orm.model import Model
from half_orm.relation import singleton

halftest = Model('halftest') # We connect to the PostgreSQL database
# print(halftest) to get the list of relations in the database

class Post(halftest.get_relation_class('blog.post')):
    """blog.post is a table of the halftest database (<schema>.<relation>)
    To get a full description of the relation, use print(Post())
    """
    #  The Fkeys template is provided by print(Post()). Just fill in the keys names.
    Fkeys = {
        'comments_rfk': '_reverse_fkey_halftest_blog_comment_post_id', # a post is referenced by comments
        'author_fk': 'author' # the post references a person
    }

class Person(halftest.get_relation_class('actor.person')):
    Fkeys = {
        'posts_rfk': '_reverse_fkey_halftest_blog_post_author_first_name_author_last_name_author_birth_date',
        'comments_rfk': '_reverse_fkey_halftest_blog_comment_author_id'
    }
    @singleton # This ensures that the author of the post is well defined.
    def add_post(self, title: str=None, content: str=None) -> dict:
        return self.posts_rfk(title=title, content=content).insert()
    @singleton
    def add_comment(self, post: Post=None, content: str=None) -> dict:
        return self.comments_rfk(content=content, post_id=post.id.value).insert()

def main():
    gaston = Person(last_name='Lagaffe', first_name='Gaston', birth_date='1957-02-28')
    gaston.delete()
    if gaston.is_empty(): # gaston defines a subset of the actor.person table.
        gaston.insert()
    post = Post(**gaston.add_post(title='Easy', content='halfORM is fun!'))
    gaston.add_comment(content='This is a comment on the newly created post.', post=post)
    print(list(post.comments_rfk())) # The relational objects are iterators
    post.update(title='Super easy')
    gaston.delete()

Learn half_orm in half an hour

Install half_orm

run pip install half_orm in a virtual environment.

Set your HALFORM_CONF_DIR

Create a directory to store your connection files and set the shell variable HALFORM_CONF_DIR:

% mkdir ~/.half_orm
% export HALFORM_CONF_DIR=~/.half_orm

Set your HALFORM_CONF_DIR for windows users:

• select settings in the menu
• search for "variable"
• select "Edit environment variables for your account"

Create a connection file in the $HALFORM_CONF_DIR containing the following information (with your values):

[database]
name = db_name
user = username
password = password
host = localhost
port = 5432

Your ready to go!

Connect to the database

>>> from half_orm.model import Model
>>> my_db = Model('my_database')

The my_database is the name of the connexion file. It will be fetched in the directory referenced by the environment variable HALFORM_CONF_DIR if defined, in /etc/half_orm otherwise.

Get a rapid description of the database structure

Once connected to the database, you can easily have an overview of its structure:

print(my_db)

It displays as many lines as there are relations, views or materialized views in your database. Each row has the form:

<relation type> <"schema name"."relation name">

Where relation type is one of r, p, v, m, f:

• r for a relation,
• p for a partitioned table,
• v for a view,
• m for a materialized view,
• f for foreign data.

for instance (using the halftest database):

r "actor"."person"
r "blog"."comment"
r "blog"."event"
r "blog"."post"
v "blog.view"."post_comment"

Note: We only allow dots in schema names.

Check if a relation exists in the database

>>> my_db.has_relation('blog.view.post_comment')
True

Get the class of a relation (the Model.get_relation_class method)

To work with a table of your database, you must instanciate the corresponding class:

class Person(halftest.get_relation_class('actor.person')):
    pass
class PostComment(halftest.get_relation_class('blog.view.post_comment')):
    pass

The argument passed to get_relation_class is as string of the form: <schema_name>.<relation_name>.

Note: Again, dots are only allowed in schema names.

To get a full description of the corresponding relation, print an instance of the class:

>>> print(Person())

__RCLS: <class 'half_orm.relation.Table_HalftestActorPerson'>
This class allows you to manipulate the data in the PG relation:
TABLE: "halftest":"actor"."person"
DESCRIPTION:
The table actor.person contains the persons of the blogging system.
The id attribute is a serial. Just pass first_name, last_name and birth_date
to insert a new person.
FIELDS:
- id:         (int4) NOT NULL
- first_name: (text) NOT NULL
- last_name:  (text) NOT NULL
- birth_date: (date) NOT NULL

PRIMARY KEY (first_name, last_name, birth_date)
UNIQUE CONSTRAINT (id)
UNIQUE CONSTRAINT (first_name)
FOREIGN KEYS:
- _reverse_fkey_halftest_blog_comment_author_id: ("id")
 ↳ "halftest":"blog"."comment"(author_id)
- _reverse_fkey_halftest_blog_event_author_first_name_author_last_name_author_birth_date: ("birth_date", "first_name", "last_name")
 ↳ "halftest":"blog"."event"(author_first_name, author_last_name, author_birth_date)
- _reverse_fkey_halftest_blog_post_author_first_name_author_last_name_author_birth_date: ("birth_date", "first_name", "last_name")
 ↳ "halftest":"blog"."post"(author_first_name, author_last_name, author_birth_date)

To use the foreign keys as direct attributes of the class, copy/paste the Fkeys bellow in
your code as a class attribute and replace the empty string(s) key(s) with the alias you
want to use. The aliases must be unique and different from any of the column names. Empty
string keys are ignored.

Fkeys = {
    '': '_reverse_fkey_halftest_blog_comment_author_id',
    '': '_reverse_fkey_halftest_blog_event_author_first_name_author_last_name_author_birth_date',
    '': '_reverse_fkey_halftest_blog_post_author_first_name_author_last_name_author_birth_date',
}

It provides you with information extracted from the database metadata:

• description: the comment on the relationship if there is one,
• fields: the list of columns, their types and contraints
• foreign keys: the list of FKs if any. A _reverse_* FK is a FK made on the current relation.

Constraining a relation

When you instantiate an object with no arguments, its intention corresponds to all the data present in the corresponding relation. Person() represents the set of people contained in the actor.person table (ie. there is no constraint on the set). You can get the number of elements in a relation whith the len function as in len(Person()).

To constrain a set, you must specify one or more values for the fields/columns in the set with a tuple of the form: (comp, value). The comp value ('=' if ommited) is either a SQL comparison operator or a pattern matching operator (like or POSIX regular expression).

You can constrain a relation object at instanciation:

Person(last_name='Lagaffe', first_name='Gaston', birth_date='1957-02-28')
Person(last_name=('ilike', '_a%'))
Person(birth_date='1957-02-28')

You can also constrain an instanciated object:

gaston = Person()
gaston.last_name = ('ilike', 'l%')
gaston.first_name = 'Gaston'

half_orm prevents you from making typos:

gaston.lost_name = 'Lagaffe'
# raises a half_orm.relation_errors.IsFrozenError Exception

The NULL value

half_orm provides the NULL value:

from half_orm.null import NULL

nobody = Person()
nobody.last_name = NULL
assert len(nobody) == 0 # last_name is part of the PK

Set operators

You can use the set operators to set more complex constraints on your relations:

• &, |, ^ and - for and, or, xor and not. Take a look at the algebra test file.
• you can also use the ==, != and in operators to compare two sets.

my_selection = Person(last_name=('ilike', '_a%')) | Person(first_name=('ilike', 'A%'))

my_selection represents the set of people whose second letter of the name is an a or whose first letter of the first name is an a.

DML. The insert, select, update, delete methods.

These methods trigger their corresponding SQL querie on the database. For debugging purposes, you can print the SQL query built by half_orm when the DML method is invoked using the _mogrify() method.

people._mogrify()
people.select()

Insert

To insert a tuple in the relation, use the insert method as shown below:

Person(last_name='Lagaffe', first_name='Gaston', birth_date='1957-02-28').insert()

insert returns the row as a dict in a list. So, to get the id of the newly inserted row, you can write:

lagaffe = Person(last_name='Lagaffe', first_name='Gaston', birth_date='1957-02-28')
lagaffe_id = lagaffe.insert()['id']

You can trigger a transaction for any combination of insert, modify or delete operations using the Relation.Transaction decorator.

class Person(halftest.get_relation_class('actor.person')):
    # [...]

    def insert_many(self, *data):
        """Insert serveral people in a single transaction."""
        @self.Transaction
        def insert(self, *data):
            for d_pers in data:
                self(**d_pers).insert()
        insert(self, *data)

people = Person()
people.insert_many(*[
    {'last_name':'Lagaffe', 'first_name':'Gaston', 'birth_date':'1957-02-28'},
    {'last_name':'Fricotin', 'first_name':'Bibi', 'birth_date':'1924-10-05'},
    {'last_name':'Maltese', 'first_name':'Corto', 'birth_date':'1975-01-07'},
    {'last_name':'Talon', 'first_name':'Achile', 'birth_date':'1963-11-07'},
    {'last_name':'Jourdan', 'first_name':'Gil', 'birth_date':'1956-09-20'}
])

Note: half_orm works in autocommit mode by default. Without transaction, all the missing data would be inserted.

Select

The select method is a generator. It returns all the data of the relation that match the constraint defined on the Relation object. The data is returned in a list of RealDictRows. A RealDictRow is a subclass of dict provided by psycopg2.

>>> people = Person()
>>> print(list(people.select()))
[RealDictRow([('id', 159), ('first_name', 'Gil'), ('last_name', 'Jourdan'), ('birth_date', datetime.date(1956, 9, 20))]), RealDictRow([('id', 160), ('first_name', 'Gaston'), ('last_name', 'Lagaffe'), ('birth_date', datetime.date(1957, 2, 28))]), RealDictRow([('id', 161), ('first_name', 'Bibi'), ('last_name', 'Fricotin'), ('birth_date', datetime.date(1924, 10, 5))]), RealDictRow([('id', 162), ('first_name', 'Corto'), ('last_name', 'Maltese'), ('birth_date', datetime.date(1975, 1, 7))]), RealDictRow([('id', 163), ('first_name', 'Achile'), ('last_name', 'Talon'), ('birth_date', datetime.date(1963, 11, 7))])]
>>>

You can set a limit or an offset:

>>> people.offset(1).limit(2)
>>> print([dict(elt) for elt in list(people.select())])
[{'id': 232, 'first_name': 'Gaston', 'last_name': 'Lagaffe', 'birth_date': datetime.date(1957, 2, 28)}, {'id': 233, 'first_name': 'Bibi', 'last_name': 'Fricotin', 'birth_date': datetime.date(1924, 10, 5)}]

You can also get a subset of the attributes by passing a list of columns names to select:

>>> print(list(people.select('last_name')))
[{'last_name': 'Lagaffe'}, {'last_name': 'Fricotin'}]

Note: The set offset and limit still apply.

Select one: the get method

The get method returns an object whose fields are constrained with the values of the corresponding row in the database. It raises an ExpectedOneError Exception if 0 or more than 1 rows match the intention. The returned object is a singleton (see below).

gaston = Person(last_name='Lagaffe').get(*args)

is equivalent to

lagaffe = Person(last_name='Lagaffe')
if lagaffe.is_empty() or len(lagaffe) > 1:
    raise ExcpetedOneError
gaston = Person(**next(lagaffe.select(*args)))
gaston._is_singleton = True

Is it a set? Is it an element of the set?

Let's go back to our definition of the class Person. We would like to write a property that returns the full name of a person.

class Person(halftest.get_relation_class('actor.person')):
    # [...]
    @property
    def full_name(self):
        return f'{self.first_name} {self.last_name}'

Used in the following context, the full_name property wouldn't make much sens:

lagaffe = Person(last_name='Lagaffe')
lagaffe.full_name # returns 'None Lagaffe'

In this case, you can use the @singleton decorator to ensure that the self object references one and only one element:

from half_orm.relation import singleton

class Person(halftest.get_relation_class('actor.person')):
    @property
    @singleton
    def full_name(self):
        return f'{self.first_name} {self.last_name}'

gaston = Person(first_name='Gaston')
gaston.full_name # now returns 'Gaston Lagaffe'

If more than one person has Gaston as first name in the actor.person table, a NotASingletonError exception would be raised:

half_orm.relation_errors.NotASingletonError: Not a singleton. Got X tuples

Forcing _is_singleton attribute.

By forcing the attribute _is_singleton of a Relation object to True, you can avoid some unnecessary get() that a @singleton decorator would have triggered. Here is an example:

class Person(halftest.get_relation_class('actor.person')):
    # [...]
    @singleton
    def do_something_else(self):
        "Needs self to be a singleton"
        ...

    def do_something(self):
        for elt in self.select():
            pers = Person(**elt)
            pers._is_singleton = True # You must be pretty sure of what you're doing here. See the warning and the explanation.
            pers.do_something_else() # Warning! do_something_else won't check that pers is indeed a singleton

Warning! By setting _is_singleton value to True, you disable the check that @singleton would have made before executing do_something_else. This example works for two reasons:

1. select is called without argument ensuring that all columns are retreived from the database,
2. The constraints of the actor.person table make it a set (ie. each element returned by select is indeed a singleton).

Update

To update a subset, you first define the subset an then invoque the udpate method with the new values passed as argument.

gaston = Person(first_name='Gaston')
gaston.update(birth_date='1970-01-01')

Let's look at how we could turn the last name into capital letters for a subset of people:

class Person(halftest.get_relation_class('actor.person')):
    # [...]

    def upper_last_name(self):
        "tranform last name to upper case."
        @self.Transaction
        def update(self):
            for d_pers in self.select('id', 'last_name'):
                pers = Person(**d_pers) # IMPORTANT! See the warning below.
                pers.update(last_name=d_pers['last_name'].upper())
                #    ^^^^^^ here is the actual update
        update(self)

Again, we insure the atomicity of the transaction using the Relation.Transaction decorator.

>>> a_pers = Person(last_name=('ilike', '_a%'))
>>> print([elt.last_name for elt in list(a_pers.select())])
>>> a_pers = Person(last_name = ('ilike', '_a%'))
>>> print([elt['last_name'] for elt in a_pers.select('last_name')])
['Lagaffe', 'Maltese', 'Talon']
>>> a_pers.upper_last_name()
>>> print([elt['last_name'] for elt in a_pers.select('last_name')])
['LAGAFFE', 'MALTESE', 'TALON']

WARNING! The following code won't update the database. people.select() returns a list of dictionaries and the update method invoked here would only update the corresponding dictonary. It's a common pitfall.

for pers in people.select():
    pers.update(...) # Won't work (pers is a dict)!

Update all data in a table

If you want to update all the data in a relation, you must set the argument update_all to True. A RuntimeError is raised otherwise.

Person().update(birth_date='1970-01-01', update_all=True)

Delete

The delete method allows you to remove a set of elements from a table:

gaston = Person(first_name='Gaston')
gaston.delete()

To remove every tuples from a table, you must set the argument delete_all to True. A RuntimeError is raised otherwise.

Person().delete(delete_all=True)
if not Person().is_empty():
    print('Weird! You should check your "on delete cascade".')

Well, there is not much left after this in the actor.person table.

Working with foreign keys [WIP]

This is a work in progress

A relational object integrates all the material necessary to process its foreign keys and the foreign keys that point to this object. When you print the object, its representation ends with the information about the foreign keys:

To use the foreign keys as direct attributes of the class, copy/paste the Fkeys bellow in
your code as a class attribute and replace the empty string(s) key(s) with the alias you
want to use. The aliases must be unique and different from any of the column names. Empty
string keys are ignored.

Fkeys = {
    [...]
}

Let's see an example with the blog.post relation:

>>> class Post(halftest.get_relation_class('blog.post')):
...     pass
...
>>> Post()

__RCLS: <class '__main__.Post'>
This class allows you to manipulate the data in the PG relation:
TABLE: "halftest":"blog"."post"
DESCRIPTION:
The table blog.post contains all the post
made by a person in the blogging system.
FIELDS:
- id:                (int4) NOT NULL
- title:             (text)
- content:           (text)
- author_first_name: (text)
- author_last_name:  (text)
- author_birth_date: (date)

PRIMARY KEY (id)
UNIQUE CONSTRAINT (title, content)
FOREIGN KEYS:
- _reverse_fkey_halftest_blog_comment_post_id: ("id")
 ↳ "halftest":"blog"."comment"(post_id)
- author: ("author_birth_date", "author_first_name", "author_last_name")
 ↳ "halftest":"actor"."person"(first_name, last_name, birth_date)

To use the foreign keys as direct attributes of the class, copy/paste the Fkeys bellow in
your code as a class attribute and replace the empty string(s) key(s) with the alias you
want to use. The aliases must be unique and different from any of the column names. Empty
string keys are ignored.

Fkeys = {
    '': '_reverse_fkey_halftest_blog_comment_post_id',
    '': 'author',
}

It has two foreign keys named _reverse_fkey_halftest_blog_comment_post_id and author:

• author is the foreign key that refrences an actor.person from the table blog.post.
• _reverse_fkey_halftest_blog_comment_post_id is the foreign key that references a blog.post from the table blog.comment. The foreign key is traversed in opposite direction (from blog.post to blog.comment).

We redefine our class to add the aliases for our foreign keys:

class Post(halftest.get_relation_class('blog.post')):
    Fkeys = {
        'comments_rfk': '_reverse_fkey_halftest_blog_comment_post_id',
        'author_fk': 'author'
    }

Note: By convention, we suffix by _fk the foreign keys and by _rfk the foreign keys traversed in reverse. The plural in comments_rfk indicates that a post can be referenced by many comments.

A foreign key is a transitional object, so when you instanciate a FKey object, you get the relation it points to. The original constraint is propagated through the foreign key.

Given a post defined by a constraint:

a_post = Post(**constraint)
comments_on_a_post = a_post.comments_rfk()
author_of_a_post = a_post.author_fk()

You can also add a filter on a foreign key.

comments_on_a_post_containing_simple = a_post.comment_rfk(content=('ilike', '%simple%'))

The Fkey class has the set method which allows you to constrain a foreign key with a Relation object. To get the comments made by Gaston, we simply constraint the author_fk Fkey to reference the entry corresponding to Gaston in the actor.person table. To do so, we use the Fkey.set() method:

gaston = Person(first_name='Gaston')
gaston_comments = Comment()
gaston_comments.author_fk.set(gaston)
print(list(gaston_comments.select())

TODO. Some documentation about the chaining of FKeys

The join method

The join method allows you to integrate the data associated to a Relation object in the result obtained by the select method by using foreign keys of the object or referencing the object.

Unlike the select method (which is a generator), the join method returns a list.

It takes a list of tuples each having two or three elements:

• a remote Relation object which must be reachable using a direct or "reverse" foreign key,

• the name of the key under which the associated data would be stored,

• an optional list of columns (str[]) or the name of a column (str) to be extracted from the remote object.

  If the third argument is omitted, all columns are retreived.

The following code

lagaffe = Person(last_name='Lagaffe')
res = lagaffe.join(
    (Comment(), 'comments', ['id', 'post_id']),
    (Post(), 'posts', 'id')
)

would return the list of people named Lagaffe with two additional attributes : comments and posts.

The data associated with comments is a list of dictionaries whose keys are 'id' and 'post_id'. The data associated with posts is a simple list of values corresponding to the 'id' column.

PostgreSQL functions and stored procedures

half_orm.model.Model class provides two methods to deal with functions and stored procedures: execute_function and call_procedure. You can pass parameters as a list or a dictionary (for named parameters). The returned value of execute_function is a list of dict like objects.

from half_orm.model import Model
halftest = Model('halftest')

res = halftest.execute_function('schema.my_function', *args)
res = halftest.execute_function('schema.my_function', **kwargs) # for named parameters

half_test.call_procedure('schema.my_procedure', *args)
half_test.call_procedure('schema.my_procedure', **kwargs) # for named parameters

Last: SQL queries

If you realy need to invoke a SQL query not managed by half_orm, use the Model.execute_query method:

from half_orm.model import Model
halftest = Model('halftest')
halftest.execute_query('select 1')

By the way, this is the code used in the Model.ping method that makes sure the connection is established and attempts a reconnection if it is not.

That's it! You've learn pretty much everything there is to know about half_orm.

Next: hop, the half_orm packager

The hop command, provided by the package half_orm_packager, allows you to create a Python package corresponding to the model of your database, to patch the model and the corresponding Python code, to test your database model and your business code. For more information, see https://github.com/collorg/halfORM_packager.

Want to contribute?

Fork me on Github: https://github.com/collorg/halfORM