Unified Model Definition

status : draft

Note

This Camelot enhancement proposal is a work in progress and implementation has not started.

Introduction

When Camelot is used to display objects that are mapped to the database through SQLAlchemy, Camelot uses introspection to create default views.

When displaying objects that are not mapped to the database, such introspection is not possible. This often leads to a rather verbose definition of the model and the view

class Task( object ):

    def __init__( self ):
        self.description = ''
        self.creation_date = datetime.date.today()

    class Admin( ObjectAdmin ):
        list_display = ['description', 'due_date']
        field_attributes = { 'description': {'delegate':delegates.TextLineDelegate,
                                             'editable':True},
                             'due_date': {'delegate':delegates.DateDelegate,
                                          'editable':True}, }

This proposal aims to find a way to create a less descriptive way to define model and view in the case of simple Python objects.

Summary

Fields on objects can be defined in a uniform way wether they are mapped to the database or not. The definition of the unmapped Task class would be

class Task( object ):
    description = Field( unicode, default = 0 )
    due_date = Field( datetime.date, default = 0 )

While the definition of the mapped Task class would be

class Task( Entity ):
    description = Field( sqlalchemy.types.Unicode, default = 0 )
    due_date = Field( sqlalchemy.types.Date, default = 0 )

Both definitions should be enough for Camelot to create a view and make the object usable in the model.

Fields

Default views

Field attributes

Relations