Preparing Your Models

Validation

SQLAlchemy-JSONAPI makes use of the SQLAlchemy validates decorator:

from sqlalchemy.orm import validates

class User(Base):
    email = Column(Unicode(255))

    @validates('email')
    def validate_email(self, key, email):
        """ Ultra-strong email validation. """
        assert '@' in email, 'Not an email'
        return email

Now raise your hand if you knew SQLAlchemy had that decorator. Well, now you know, and it’s quite useful!

Attribute Descriptors

Sometimes, you may need to provide your own getters and setters to attributes:

from sqlalchemy_jsonapi import attr_descriptor, AttributeActions

class User(Base):
    id = Column(UUIDType)
    # ...

    @attr_descriptor(AttributeActions.GET, 'id')
    def id_getter(self):
        return str(self.id)

    @attr_descriptor(AttributeActions.SET, 'id')
    def id_setter(self, new_id):
        self.id = UUID(new_id)

Note: id is not able to be altered after initial setting in JSON API to keep it consistent.

Relationship Descriptors

Relationship’s come in two flavors: to-one and to-many (or tranditional and LDS-flavored if you prefer those terms). To one descriptors have the actions GET and SET:

@rel_descriptor(RelationshipActions.GET, 'significant_other')
def getter(self):
    # ...

@rel_descriptor(RelationshipActions.SET, 'significant_other')
def setter(self, value):
    # ...

To-many have GET, APPEND, and DELETE:

@rel_descriptor(RelationshipActions.GET, 'angry_exes')
def getter(self):
    # ...

@rel_descriptor(RelationshipActions.APPEND, 'angry_exes')
def appender(self):
    # ...

@rel_descriptor(RelationshipActions.DELETE, 'angry_exes')
def remover(self):
    # ...

Permission Testing

Permissions are a complex challenge in relational databases. While the solution provided right now is extremely simple, it is almost guaranteed to evolve and change drastically as this library gets used more in production. Thus it is advisable that on every major version number increment, you should check this section for changes to permissions.

Anyway, there are currently four permissions that are checked: GET, CREATE, EDIT, and DELETE. Permission tests can be applied module-wide or to specific fields:

@permission_test(Permissions.VIEW)
def can_view(self):
    return self.is_published

@permission_test(Permissions.EDIT, 'slug')
def can_edit_slug(self):
    return False