SAValidation

Introduction

SAValidation facilitates Active Record like validation on SQLAlchemy declarative model objects.

You can install the in-development version of savalidation with easy_install savalidation==dev.

The home page is currently the GitHub repository.

Usage Example

The following is a snippet from the examples.py file:

from datetime import datetime
import formencode
import sqlalchemy as sa
import sqlalchemy.ext.declarative as sadec
import sqlalchemy.sql as sasql
import sqlalchemy.orm as saorm

from savalidation import ValidationMixin, watch_session
import savalidation.validators as val

engine = sa.create_engine('sqlite://')
#engine.echo = True
meta = sa.MetaData()
Base = sadec.declarative_base(metadata=meta)

Session = saorm.scoped_session(
    saorm.sessionmaker(
        bind=engine,
        autoflush=False
    )
)

sess = Session

class Family(Base, ValidationMixin):
    __tablename__ = 'families'

    # SA COLUMNS
    id = sa.Column(sa.Integer, primary_key=True)
    createdts = sa.Column(sa.DateTime, nullable=False, default=datetime.now, server_default=sasql.text('CURRENT_TIMESTAMP'))
    updatedts = sa.Column(sa.DateTime, onupdate=datetime.now)
    name =  sa.Column(sa.Unicode(75), nullable=False, unique=True)
    reg_num = sa.Column(sa.Integer, nullable=False, unique=True)
    status =  sa.Column(sa.Unicode(15), nullable=False, default=u'active', server_default=u'active')

    # VALIDATION
    STATUS_CHOICES = (
        ('active', 'Active'),
        ('inactive', 'Inactive'),
        ('moved', 'Moved'),
    )
    # will validate nullability and string types
    val.validates_constraints()
    val.validates_one_of('status', [k for k, v in STATUS_CHOICES])

    #OTHER
    def __str__(self):
        return '<Family id=%s, name=%s>' % (self.id, self.name)

class Person(Base, ValidationMixin):
    __tablename__ = 'people'

    id = sa.Column(sa.Integer, primary_key=True)
    createdts = sa.Column(sa.DateTime, nullable=False, server_default=sasql.text('CURRENT_TIMESTAMP'))
    updatedts = sa.Column(sa.DateTime, onupdate=datetime.now)
    name_first = sa.Column(sa.Unicode(75), nullable=False)
    name_last = sa.Column(sa.Unicode(75), nullable=False)
    family_role = sa.Column(sa.Unicode(20), nullable=False)
    nullable_but_required = sa.Column(sa.Unicode(5))

    ROLE_CHOICES = (
        ('father', 'Father'),
        ('mother', 'Mother'),
        ('child', 'Child'),
    )
    val.validates_constraints(exclude='createdts')
    val.validates_presence_of('nullable_but_required')
    val.validates_choices('family_role', ROLE_CHOICES)

class ReverseConverter(formencode.api.FancyValidator):
    def _to_python(self, value, state):
        if not isinstance(value, basestring):
            raise formencode.Invalid('Must be a string type', value, state)
        # this reverse a string or list...yah, I know, it looks funny
        return value[::-1]

validates_reverse = val.formencode_factory(ReverseConverter)
converts_reverse = val.formencode_factory(ReverseConverter, sv_convert=True)

class ConversionTester(Base, ValidationMixin):
    __tablename__ = 'conversion_testers'

    id = sa.Column(sa.Integer, primary_key=True)
    val1 = sa.Column(sa.String(25))
    val2 = sa.Column(sa.String(25))
    val3 = sa.Column(sa.String(25))
    val4 = sa.Column(sa.String(25))

    validates_reverse('val1')
    validates_reverse('val2', sv_convert=True)
    converts_reverse('val3')
    converts_reverse('val4', sv_convert=False)

See more examples in the tests directory of the distribution.

Installing & Testing Source

(this is one way, there are others)

# create a virtualenv
# activate the virtualenv

$ pip install -e git+git://github.com/blazelibs/sqlalchemy-validation.git@master#egg=savalidation
$ pip install nose
$ cd src/savalidation/savalidation
$ nosetests

Questions & Comments

Please visit: http://groups.google.com/group/blazelibs

Known Issues

Final values that get set on an ORM mapped object attributes through relationships, the default or onupdate column parameters, and possibly others are not availble at the time validation is done.

In some cases, this can be caught after the flush (before commit) when those values become available on the ORM object.

Unfortunately, that is of limited value in the case where the the value that slipped through violates a DB constraint. In that case, a true DB exception will be raised.

Dependencies

• SQLAlchemy > 0.7.6
• FormEncode
• python-dateutil (for date/time converters)
• Nose (if you want to run the tests)

Credits

This project borrows code and ideas from:

• Sqlalchemy Validations
• Elixir

Current Status

The code itself seems stable, but the API may change in the future.