quickhowto_mongo.rst

Model Views on MongoDB

Last chapter we created a very simple contacts application, we are going to do the same, this time using MongoDB. Remember you should use the correct app skeleton, the one for MongoDB, this way the security models will be created on the MongoDB and not on SQLLite by default, take a look at the way that AppBuilder is initialized.

And the source code for this chapter on examples

Initialization

Initialization with MongoDB is a bit different, we must tell F.A.B. to use a different SecurityManager.

On __init__.py:

import logging
from flask import Flask
from flask_appbuilder import AppBuilder
from flask_appbuilder.security.mongoengine.manager import SecurityManager
from flask_mongoengine import MongoEngine

logging.getLogger().setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

app = Flask(__name__)
app.config.from_object('config')
dbmongo = MongoEngine(app)
# The Flask-AppBuilder init
appbuilder = AppBuilder(app, security_manager_class=SecurityManager)

from app import models, views

AppBuilder is initialized with the security_manager_class parameter with a SecurityManager class for MongoDB. All security models are created on MongoDB. Notice also that no db.session is passed to AppBuilder there is no session on MongoDB.

Define your models (models.py)

We are going to define two extra models from the previous example, just for fun.

The ContactGroup model.

from mongoengine import Document
from mongoengine import DateTimeField, StringField, ReferenceField, ListField

class ContactGroup(Document):
    name = StringField(max_length=60, required=True, unique=True)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.name

    def __repr__(self):
        return self.name

The Contacts Gender and Tags models.

class Gender(Document):
    name = StringField(max_length=60, required=True, unique=True)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.name

    def __repr__(self):
        return self.name

    def __str__(self):
        return self.name


class Tags(Document):
    name = StringField(max_length=60, required=True, unique=True)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.name


class Contact(Document):
    name = StringField(max_length=60, required=True, unique=True)
    address = StringField(max_length=60)
    birthday = DateTimeField()
    personal_phone = StringField(max_length=20)
    personal_celphone = StringField(max_length=20)
    contact_group = ReferenceField(ContactGroup, required=True)
    gender = ReferenceField(Gender, required=True)
    tags = ListField(ReferenceField(Tags))

Notice how the relations many to one and many to many are made, the framework still only supports this kind of normalized schemas.

Define your Views (views.py)

Now we are going to define our view for ContactGroup model. This view will setup functionality for create, remove, update and show primitives for your model's definition.

Inherit from ModelView class that inherits from BaseCRUDView that inherits from BaseModelView, so you can override all their public properties to configure many details for your CRUD primitives. take a look at :doc:`advanced`.

from flask.ext.appbuilder import ModelView
from flask.ext.appbuilder.models.mongoengine.interface import MongoEngineInterface

class GroupModelView(ModelView):
    datamodel = MongoEngineInterface(ContactGroup)
    related_views = [ContactModelView]

The ContactModelView ? (that was a reference in related_views list)

Let's define it:

class ContactModelView(ModelView):
    datamodel = MongoEngineInterface(Contact)

    label_columns = {'contact_group':'Contacts Group'}
    list_columns = ['name','personal_celphone','birthday','contact_group']

    show_fieldsets = [
        ('Summary',{'fields':['name','address','contact_group']}),
        ('Personal Info',{'fields':['birthday','personal_phone','personal_celphone'],'expanded':False}),
        ]

Register (views.py)

Register everything, to present the models and create the menu.

appbuilder.add_view(GroupModelView, "List Groups",icon = "fa-folder-open-o",category = "Contacts",
                category_icon = "fa-envelope")
appbuilder.add_view(ContactModelView, "List Contacts",icon = "fa-envelope",category = "Contacts")

Take a look at the :doc:`api` for add_view method.

As you can see, you register and define your Views exactly the same way as with SQLAlchemy. You can even use both.