A pyramid plugin that describes a pyramid application URL hierarchy via inspection.
Project description
A pyramid plugin that describes a pyramid application URL hierarchy, either by responding to an HTTP request or on the command line, via application inspection and reflection. It has built-in support for plain-text hierachies, reStructuredText, HTML, PDF, JSON, YAML, WADL, and XML, however other custom formats can be added easily.
Exposing an application’s structure via HTTP is useful to dynamically generate an API description (via WADL, JSON, or YAML) or to create documentation directly from source code.
On the command-line it is useful to get visibility into an application’s URL structure and hierarchy so that it can be understood and maintained.
TL;DR
Install:
$ pip install pyramid-describeCommand-line example:
$ pdescribe example.ini --format txt
/ # The application root.
├── contact/ # Contact manager.
│ ├── <POST> # Creates a new 'contact' object.
│ └── {CONTACTID} # RESTful access to a specific contact.
│ ├── <DELETE> # Delete this contact.
│ ├── <GET> # Get this contact's details.
│ └── <PUT> # Update this contact's details.
├── login # Authenticate against the server.
└── logout # Remove authentication tokens.Examples of the above application in all other formats with built-in support are available at: text (pure-ASCII), reStructuredText, HTML, PDF, JSON, YAML, WADL, and XML.
Configuration
When pyramid-describe is integrated via inclusion (e.g. config.include('pyramid_describe')), the module will auto-create DescribeController’s as defined in the application’s settings. The following configurations can be specified there (note that the first one controls the prefix set on the others):
describe.prefixes : list(str), default: ‘describe’
Defines the prefix or the list of prefixes that pyramid-describe settings will be searched for in the configuration. For each prefix, a separate DescribeController will be created and attached to the application router. The following example attaches two controllers at /desc-one and /desc-two:
[app:main] describe.prefixes =describe-one describe-twodescribe-one.attach =/desc-one# other `describe-one` options... describe-two.attach =/desc-two# other `describe-two` options...describe.class : resolve-spec, default: pyramid_describe.DescribeController
Sets the global default Controller class that will be instantiated for each of the stanzas defined in describe.prefixes. Note that this option can be overriden on a per-stanza basis.
{PREFIX}.class : resolve-spec, default: describe.class
Sets the Controller class that will be instantiated for this PREFIX stanza, overriding describe.class.
{PREFIX}.attach : str, default: /describe
Specifies the path to attach the controller to the current application’s router. Note that this uses the add_controller directive, and ensures that pyramid-controllers has already been added via an explicit call to config.include(). This path will serve the default format: to request alternate formats, use “PATH/FILENAME.EXT” (where FILENAME is controlled by the {PREFIX}.filename configuration and EXT specifies the format) or use the “format=EXT” query-string. Examples using the default settings:
http://localhost:8080/describe/application.txt http://localhost:8080/describe/application.json http://localhost:8080/describe?format=json{PREFIX}.filename : str, default: application
Sets the filename base component. Typically, this is set to the application’s name and should probably include the application version.
{PREFIX}.redirect : str, default: null
Similar to the filename option, this option sets a filename base component that will redirect (with a 302) to the current filename. This allows there to be a persistent known location that can be used if the filename option is dynamic or changes with revisions.
{PREFIX}.inspect : str, default: /
Specifies the top-level URL to start the application inspection at.
TODO: this does not work.
WARNING: this does not work.
SERIOUSLY: this does not work, it only adds the specified path as a URL prefix… doh!
{PREFIX}.include : list(regex-spec), default: null
The include option lists encapsulated regular expressions that an endpoint must match at least one of in order to be included in the output. This option can be used with the exclude option, in which case endpoints are first matched for inclusion, then matched for exclusion (i.e. the order is “allow,deny” in apache terminology).
Encapsulated regular expressions are expressed in the syntax “/EXPR/FLAGS”, where the “/” can be replaced by any character otherwise not found in the rest of the expression. The flags can be any combination of the following characters:
i: Case-insensitive matching.
l: Use locale-dependent processing (for w, W, etc.).
m: Multi-line mode, i.e. “^” and “$” match individual lines.
s: The “.” matches newlines as well.
u: Use the unicode properties db (for w, W, etc.).
x: Allow verbose regular expressions.
Example:
describe.include =:^/api/:i :^/foo(/.*)?$:describe.exclude =:.*/private(/.*)?$:i{PREFIX}.exclude : list(regex-spec), default: null
The inverse of the include option – see include for details.
{PREFIX}.entries.filters : list(resolve-spec), default: null
This option specifies a callable (or string in python dot syntax) or list of thereof that filter and modify the entries before they are rendered to the requested format. Each entry that is selected for inclusion for rendering is first passed through each filter and replaced by the return value from the call. This is done for each filter consecutively. If any filter returns None, the entry is removed from the selection list.
These filters are intended to allow two primary features:
Access control: a filter can inspect the entry and the requesting user and determine if the entry should be made visible. If not, it should return None.
Custom documentation parsing: a filter can parse the entry’s doc attribute (which gets auto-populated with the entry’s python documentation string), and extract other information such as expected parameters, return values, and exceptions thrown. Typically, this is done with something like numpydoc.
Filters are passed two parameters: an entry object (see pyramid_describe.entry.Entry for detailed attributes) and an options dictionary. The latter has many interesting attributes, including a reference to the current request.
TODO: add documentation about entry and options.
Note that there is a separate filters option that is used to filter the entire output document, which is format-specific. See the formatting options for details.
{PREFIX}.formats : list(str), default: [‘html’, ‘txt’, ‘pdf’, ‘rst’, ‘json’, ‘yaml’, ‘wadl’, ‘xml’]
Specifies the list of formats that can be generated. The default list includes all supported built-in formats, but this can be extended by adding a format to this list and then specifying a template to render the format. For example:
# declare support for HTML, JSON and SWF describe.formats =html json swf# HTML and JSON are built-in, but SWF needs a custom template describe.format.swf.renderer =mypackage:templates/describe-swf.makoNote that the “pdf” and “yaml” formats require that optional python package dependencies be installed (respectively pdfkit and PyYAML), and that pdfkit furthermore requires that the wkhtmltopdf program be available.
{PREFIX}.format.default : str, default: first format listed in {PREFIX}.formats
Set the default format if not specified in the request.
{PREFIX}.format.{FORMAT}.renderer : asset-spec, default: ‘pyramid_describe:template/{FORMAT}.mako’
Override the default renderer for the specified format using a pyramid-style asset specification. The default is to use the pyramid-describe template with the exception of the structured data formats (JSON, YAML, XML, and WADL), which do not use a template.
Specifying a renderer pre-empts all other rendering fallback mechanisms.
{PREFIX}.format.request : { bool, list(str) }, default: false
Specifies which options, if any, can be controlled by request parameters. The setting can either be a boolean (“true”, “false”, etc), or a list of options. If truthy, all options can be specified. If falsy, no options can be specified. Otherwise it is interpreted as a space-separated list of options that can be specified.
Note that this setting can be overridden on a per-format basis by the format.{FORMAT}.request setting.
{PREFIX}.format.{FORMAT}.request : { bool, list(str) }, default: none
The per-format version of format.request. Note that this completely overrides the format.request setting for the given format, it does not extend it.
{PREFIX}.format.default.{OPTION}
Set a default rendering option for all formats. Note that this can be overridden by request parameters (see the format.request option). See the Options section for a list of all supported options.
{PREFIX}.format.override.{OPTION}
Set a rendering option for all formats that overrides any request parameters. See the Options section for a list of all supported options.
{PREFIX}.format.{FORMAT}.default.{OPTION}
Set a default rendering option for the specified format, which overrides any default value set for all formats. Note that this can be overridden by request parameters (see the format.request option). See the Options section for a list of all supported options.
{PREFIX}.format.{FORMAT}.override.{OPTION}
Set a rendering option for the specified format that overrides any request parameters and any generic format override options. See the Options section for a list of all supported options.
