weppy-REST

weppy-REST is a REST extension for the weppy framework.

Installation

You can install weppy-REST using pip:

pip install weppy-REST

And add it to your weppy application:

from weppy_rest import REST

app.use_extension(REST)

Usage

The weppy-REST extension is intended to be used with weppy models, and it uses application modules to build APIs over them.

Let's say, for example that you have a task manager app, with a Task model like this:

from weppy.orm import Model, Field

class Task(Model):
    title = Field.string()
    is_completed = Field.bool()
    created_at = Field.datetime()

Then, in order to expose REST apis for your Task model, you can use the rest_module method on your application or on any application module:

from myapp import app, Task

tasks = app.rest_module(__name__, 'api_task', Task, url_prefix='tasks')

As you can see, the usage is very similar to the weppy application modules, but we also passed the involved model to the module initialization.

This single line is enough to have a really simple REST api over the Task model, since under the default behaviour rest modules will expose 5 different routes:

• an index route that will respond to GET requests on /tasks path listing all the tasks in the database
• a read route that will respond to GET requests on /tasks/<int:rid> path returning a single task corresponding to the record id of the rid variable
• a create route that will respond to POST requests on /tasks that will create a new task in the database
• an update route that will respond to PUT or PATCH requests on /tasks/<int:rid> that will update the task corresponding to the record id of the rid variable
• a delete route that will respond to DELETE requests on /tasks/<int:rid> that will delete the task corresponding to the record id of the rid variable.

REST module parameters

The rest_module method accepts several parameters (bold ones are required) for its configuration:

Customizing the database set

Under default behavior, any REST module will use Model.all() as the database set on every operation.

When you need to customize it, you can use the get_dbset decorator. For example, you may gonna use the weppy auth module:

from myapp import auth

@tasks.get_dbset
def fetch_tasks():
    return auth.user.tasks

or you may have some soft-deletions strategies and want to expose just the records which are not deleted:

@tasks.get_dbset
def fetch_tasks():
    return Task.where(lambda t: t.is_deleted == False)

Customizing routed methods

You can customize every route of the REST module using its index, create, read, update and delete decorators. In the next examples we'll override the routes with the default ones, in order to show the original code behind the default routes.

from weppy import request

@tasks.index()
def task_list(dbset):
    rows = dbset.select(paginate=tasks.get_pagination())
    return tasks.serialize_many(rows)

As you can see, an index method should accept the dbset parameter, that is injected by the module. This is the default one or the one you defined with the get_dbset decorator.

@tasks.read()
def task_single(row):
    return tasks.serialize_one(row)

The read method should accept the row parameter that is injected by the module. Under default behaviour the module won't call your method if it doesn't find the requested record, but instead will return a 404 HTTP response.

@tasks.create()
def task_new():
    attrs = tasks.parse_params()
    resp = Task.create(**attrs)
    if resp.errors:
        response.status = 422
        return tasks.error_422(resp.errors)
    return tasks.serialize_one(resp.id)

The create method won't need any parameters, and is responsible of creating new records in the database.

@tasks.update()
def task_edit(dbset, rid):
    attrs = tasks.parse_params()
    resp = dbset.where(Task.id == rid).validate_and_update(**attrs)
    if resp.errors:
        response.status = 422
        return tasks.error_422(resp.errors)
    elif not resp.updated:
        response.status = 404
        return tasks.error_404()
    return tasks.serialize_one(Task.get(rid))

@tasks.delete()
def task_del(dbset, rid):
    deleted = dbset.where(Task.id == rid).delete()
    if not deleted:
        response.status = 404
        return tasks.error_404()
    return {}

The update and delete methods are quite similar, since they should accept the dbset parameter and the rid one, which will be the record id requested by the client.

All the decorators accept an additional pipeline parameter that you can use to add custom pipes to the routed function:

@tasks.index(pipeline=[MyCustomPipe()])
def task_index:
    # code

Customizing errors

You can define custom methods for the HTTP 404 and 422 errors that will generate the JSON output using the on_404 and on_422 decorators:

@tasks.on_404
def task_404err():
    return {'error': 'this is my 404 error'}
    
@tasks.on_422
def task_422err(errors):
    return {'error': 422, 'validation': errors.as_dict()}

Serialization

Under the default behaviour, the REST extension will use the form_rw attribute of the involved model, and overwrite the results with the contents of the rest_rw attribute if present.

For example, with this model:

from weppy.orm import Model, Field

class Task(Model):
    title = Field.string()
    is_completed = Field.bool()
    created_at = Field.datetime()
    
    form_rw = {
        'id': False,
        'created_at': False
    }

the REST extension will serialize just the title and the is_completed fields, while with this:

from weppy.orm import Model, Field

class Task(Model):
    title = Field.string()
    is_completed = Field.bool()
    created_at = Field.datetime()
    
    form_rw = {
        'id': False,
        'created_at': False
    }
    
    rest_rw = {
        'id': True
    }

the REST extension will serialize also the id field.

Serializers

Whenever you need more control over the serialization, you can use the Serializer class of the REST extension:

from weppy_rest import Serializer

class TaskSerializer(Serializer):
    attributes = ['id', 'title']
    
tasks = app.rest_module(
    __name__, 'api_task', Task, serializer=TaskSerializer, url_prefix='tasks')

Serializers are handy when you want to add custom function to serialize something present in your rows. For instance, let's say you have a very simple tagging system:

from weppy.orm import belongs_to, has_many

class Task(Model):
    has_many({'tags': 'TaskTag'})

class TaskTag(Model):
    belongs_to('task')
    name = Field.string()

and you want to serialize the tags as an embedded list in your task. Then you just have to add a tags method to your serializer:

class TaskSerializer(Serializer):
    attributes = ['id', 'title']
    
    def tags(self, row):
        return row.tags().column('name')

This is the complete list of rules that the extension will take over serializers:

• attributes is read as first step
• the form_rw and rest_rw attributes of the model are used to fill attributes list when this is empty
• the fields in the include list will be added to attributes
• the fields in the exclude list will be removed from attributes
• every method defined in the serializer not starting with _ will be called over serialization and its return value will be added to the JSON object in a key named as the method

You can also use different serialization for the list route and the other ones:

from weppy_rest import Serializer, serialize

class TaskSerializer(Serializer):
    attributes = ['id', 'title']
    
class TaskDetailSerializer(TaskSerializer):
    include = ['is_completed']
    
tasks = app.module(
    __name__, 'api_task', Task, 
    serializer=TaskDetailSerializer, url_prefix='tasks')

@tasks.index()
def task_list(dbset):
    rows = dbset.select(paginate=tasks.get_pagination())
    return serialize(rows, TaskSerializer)

Note: under default behaviour the serialize method will use the serializer passed to the module.

Parsing input

Opposite to the serialization, you will have input parsing to parse JSON requests and perform operations on the records.

Under the default behaviour, the REST extension will use the form_rw attribute of the involved model, and overwrite the results with the contents of the rest_rw attribute if present.

For example, with this model:

from weppy.orm import Model, Field

class Task(Model):
    title = Field.string()
    is_completed = Field.bool()
    created_at = Field.datetime()
    
    form_rw = {
        'id': False,
        'created_at': False
    }

the REST extension will parse the input to allow just the title and the is_completed fields, while with this:

from weppy.orm import Model, Field

class Task(Model):
    title = Field.string()
    is_completed = Field.bool()
    created_at = Field.datetime()
    
    form_rw = {
        'id': False,
        'created_at': False
    }
    
    rest_rw = {
        'id': (True, False)
        'created_at': True
    }

the REST extension will allow also the created_at field.

Parsers

Very similarly to the Serializer class, the extension provides also a Parser one:

from weppy_rest import Parser

class TaskParser(Parser):
    attributes = ['title']
    
tasks = app.rest_module(
    __name__, app, 'api_task', Task, parser=TaskParser, url_prefix='tasks')

As for serializers, you can define attributes, include and exclude lists in a parser, and add custom methods that will parse the params:

class TaskParser(Parser):
    attributes = ['title']
    
    def created_at(self, params):
        # some code

There's also an additional attribute that you can set over a Parser which is the envelope one, if you expect to have enveloped bodies over POST, PUT and PATCH requests.

Pagination

REST modules perform pagination over the index route under the default behaviour. This is performed with the paginate option during the select and the call to the get_pagination method:

def get_pagination(self):
    try:
        page = int(request.query_params.page or 1)
        assert page > 0
    except:
        page = 1
    try:
        page_size = int(
            request.query_params.page_size or 20)
        assert (10 <= page_size <= 25)
    except:
        page_size = 20
    return page, page_size

You can customize the name of the query params or the default page sizes with the extension configuration, or you can override the method completely with subclassing.

Customizing REST modules

Extension options

This is the list of all the configuration variables available on the extension for customization – the default values are set:

app.config.REST.default_module_class = RESTModule
app.config.REST.default_serializer = Serializer
app.config.REST.default_parser = Parser
app.config.REST.page_param = 'page'
app.config.REST.pagesize_param = 'page_size'
app.config.REST.min_pagesize = 10
app.config.REST.max_pagesize = 25
app.config.REST.default_pagesize = 20
app.config.REST.base_path = '/'
app.config.REST.base_id_path = '/<int:rid>'

This configuration will be used by all the REST modules you create, unless overridden.

Subclassing

Under the default behavior, every REST module will use the RESTModule class. You can create as many subclasses from this one when you need to apply the same behaviour to several modules:

from weppy_rest import RESTModule

class MyRESTModule(RESTModule):
    def init(self):
        self.disabled_methods = ['delete']
        self.index_pipeline.append(MyCustomPipe())
        self.list_envelope = 'objects'
        self.single_envelope = self.model.__name__.lower()
        
    def _get_dbset(self):
        return self.model.where(lambda m: m.user == session.user.id)
        
    def _index(self, dbset):
        rows = dbset.select(paginate=self.get_pagination())
        rv = self.serialize_many(rows)
        rv['meta'] = {'total': dbset.count()}
        return rv
        
tasks = app.rest_module(
    __name__, app, 'api_task', Task, url_prefix='tasks', 
    module_class=MyRESTModule)
tags = app.rest_module(
    __name__, app, 'api_tag', Tag, url_prefix='tags',
    module_class=MyRESTModule)

As you can see, we defined a subclass of the RESTModule one and used the init method to customize the class initialization for our needs. We strongly recommend to use this method and avoid overriding the __init__ of the class unless you really know what you're doing.

Using the init method, we disabled the delete route over the module, added a custom pipe over the index route and configured the envelope rules.

Here is a list of variables you may want to change inside the init method:

• model
• serializer
• parser
• enabled_methods
• disabled_methods
• list_envelope
• single_envelope
• use_envelope_on_parsing

Also, this is the complete list of the pipeline variables and their default values:

def init(self):
    self.index_pipeline = [SetFetcher(self)]
    self.create_pipeline = []
    self.read_pipeline = [SetFetcher(self), RecordFetcher(self)]
    self.update_pipeline = [SetFetcher(self)]
    self.delete_pipeline = [SetFetcher(self)]

We've also overridden the methods for the database set retrieval and the index route. As you can see, these methods are starting with the _ since are the default ones and you can still override them with decorators. This is the complete list of methods you may want to override instead of using decorators:

• _get_dbset
• _index
• _create
• _read
• _update
• _delete
• build_error_404
• build_error_422

There are some other methods you may need to override, like the get_pagination one or the serialization ones. Please, check the source code of the RESTModule class for further needs.

License

weppy-REST is released under BSD license. Check the LICENSE file for more details.