Interfaces are the same thing as object-oriented programming interfaces. Adapter refers to a well-known adapter design pattern that helps separating concerns in object oriented applications.
In CubicWeb adapters provide logical functionalities to entity types.
Definition of an adapter is quite trivial. An excerpt from cubicweb itself (found in cubicweb.entities.adapters):
class ITreeAdapter(EntityAdapter):
"""This adapter has to be overriden to be configured using the
tree_relation, child_role and parent_role class attributes to
benefit from this default implementation
"""
__regid__ = 'ITree'
child_role = 'subject'
parent_role = 'object'
def children_rql(self):
"""returns RQL to get children """
return self.entity.cw_related_rql(self.tree_relation, self.parent_role)
The adapter object has self.entity attribute which represents the entity being adapted.
Note
Adapters came with the notion of service identified by the registry identifier of an adapters, hence dropping the need for explicit interface and the cubicweb.predicates.implements selector. You should instead use cubicweb.predicates.is_instance when you want to select on an entity type, or cubicweb.predicates.adaptable when you want to select on a service.
from cubicweb.entities.adapters import ITreeAdapter
class MyEntityITreeAdapter(ITreeAdapter):
__select__ = is_instance('MyEntity')
tree_relation = 'filed_under'
The ITreeAdapter here provides a default implementation. The tree_relation class attribute is actually used by this implementation to help implement correct behaviour.
Here we provide a specific implementation which will be bound for MyEntity entity type (the adaptee).
Here we go with a small example. Before:
from cubicweb.predicates import implements
from cubicweb.interfaces import ITree
from cubicweb.mixins import ITreeMixIn
class MyEntity(ITreeMixIn, AnyEntity):
__implements__ = AnyEntity.__implements__ + (ITree,)
class ITreeView(EntityView):
__select__ = implements('ITree')
def cell_call(self, row, col):
entity = self.cw_rset.get_entity(row, col)
children = entity.children()
After:
from cubicweb.predicates import adaptable, is_instance
from cubicweb.entities.adapters import ITreeAdapter
class MyEntityITreeAdapter(ITreeAdapter):
__select__ = is_instance('MyEntity')
class ITreeView(EntityView):
__select__ = adaptable('ITree')
def cell_call(self, row, col):
entity = self.cw_rset.get_entity(row, col)
itree = entity.cw_adapt_to('ITree')
children = itree.children()
As we can see, the interface/mixin duality disappears and the entity class itself is completely freed from these concerns. When you want to use the ITree interface of an entity, call its cw_adapt_to method to get an adapter for this interface, then access to members of the interface on the adapter
Let’s look at an example where we defined everything ourselves. We start from:
class IFoo(Interface):
def bar(self, *args):
raise NotImplementedError
class MyEntity(AnyEntity):
__regid__ = 'MyEntity'
__implements__ = AnyEntity.__implements__ + (IFoo,)
def bar(self, *args):
return sum(captain.age for captain in self.captains)
class FooView(EntityView):
__regid__ = 'mycube.fooview'
__select__ = implements('IFoo')
def cell_call(self, row, col):
entity = self.cw_rset.get_entity(row, col)
self.w('bar: %s' % entity.bar())
Converting to:
class IFooAdapter(EntityAdapter):
__regid__ = 'IFoo'
__select__ = is_instance('MyEntity')
def bar(self, *args):
return sum(captain.age for captain in self.entity.captains)
class FooView(EntityView):
__regid__ = 'mycube.fooview'
__select__ = adaptable('IFoo')
def cell_call(self, row, col):
entity = self.cw_rset.get_entity(row, col)
self.w('bar: %s' % entity.cw_adapt_to('IFoo').bar())
Note
When migrating an entity method to an adapter, the code can be moved as is except for the self of the entity class, which in the adapter must become self.entity.
some basic entity adapter implementations, for interfaces used in the framework itself.
interface for downloadable entities
return MIME type of the downloadable content
return actual data of the downloadable content
return encoding of the downloadable content
return file name of the downloadable content
return an url to download entity’s content
standard adapter to handle fulltext indexing
return the list of entities to index when handling self.entity
The actual list of entities depends on fulltext_container usage in the datamodel definition
used by the full text indexer to get words to index
this method should only be used on the repository side since it depends on the logilab.database package
Return type: | list |
---|---|
Returns: | the list of indexable word of this entity |
return the list of entities to index when handling self.entity
The actual list of entities depends on fulltext_container usage in the datamodel definition
used by the full text indexer to get words to index
this method should only be used on the repository side since it depends on the logilab.database package
Return type: | list |
---|---|
Returns: | the list of indexable word of this entity |
This adapter has to be overriden to be configured using the tree_relation, child_role and parent_role class attributes to benefit from this default implementation.
This adapter provides a tree interface. It has to be overriden to be configured using the tree_relation, child_role and parent_role class attributes to benefit from this default implementation.
This class provides the following methods:
Return children entities.
According to the entities parameter, return entity objects or the equivalent result set.
Returns RQL to get the children of the entity.
Return children entities of different type as this entity.
According to the entities parameter, return entity objects or the equivalent result set.
Returns True if the entity does not have any children.
Returns true if the entity is root of the tree (e.g. has no parent).
Return an iterator over the item’s children.
Return an iterator on the parents of the entity.
Returns the parent entity if any, else None (e.g. if we are on the root).
Returns the list of eids from the root object to this object.
Return an iterator over the item’s descendants in a prefixed order.
Return the root entity of the tree.
Return children entities of the same type as this entity.
According to the entities parameter, return entity objects or the equivalent result set.
metaclass to print a warning on instantiation of a deprecated class
More are defined in web/views.