Using couchdbkit

couchdbkit allow to define a schema to store data in CouchDB. CouchDB is a project of the Apache foundation emerging as one of the good modern non-sql database solutions. Let's define a Pet document using couchdbkit:

>>> from formalchemy.ext import couchdb
>>> from couchdbkit import schema
>>> class Pet(couchdb.Document):
...     name = schema.StringProperty()

What about the form ? Here it is:

>>> fs = FieldSet(Pet)
>>> fs.bind(Pet())
>>> print fs.render()

So easy.

Why couchdbkit and not couchdb-python ? Don't know. I guess it's doable with couchdb-python too. The only reason is the same as Jean Sarkosy's potential election at the Epad's presidency. I know Nicolas, HAHA. No. I know Benoît Chesneau (aka benoitc). Benoît release some good stuff related to CouchDB both in python and erlang. Have a look to his bitbucket account.

Using zope.schema

I came from the zope world so I know zope.schema. Most python coders are afraid by the zope word. But they are wrong. At this time we can say that zope is no longer a framework but a set of well tested and well documented libraries. So let's define a small schema:

>>> from zope import interface
>>> from zope import schema

>>> class IPet(interface.Interface):
...     name = schema.TextLine(u'name')

Now we need an object to store values:

>>> class Pet(object):
...     interface.implements(IPet)

Let's use FormAlchemy to render a form for this pet:

>>> from formalchemy.ext.zope import FieldSet
>>> fs = FieldSet(IPet)
>>> fs = fs.bind(Pet())
>>> print fs.render()

That's it. We (at Alterway) use it in a customer project based on repoze.bfg and zope's ZODB as backend. It just work.

Using RDFAlchemy

RDFAlchemy define schemas to describe a RDF node. I know really nothing about RDF but implementing a FormAlchemy extension to support RDFAlchemy was easy so it's now in FormAlchemy. It's tagged as experimental but it work AFAIK.

One of the first implementation I like to have is a FOAF profile editor using FormAlchemy's RESTController (see bellow). I don't know how hard it can be but this can be awesome.

Pylons CRUD interface

I love Pylons. Just because it's simple and have full WSGI support. FormAlchemy have a pylons extensions for a while to generate an admin UI ala Django. This was cool but not perfect. I've added a new module in FA's pylons extension to allow to generate RESTFul CRUD interface based on a data model. Data model mean all models supported by FormAlchemy.

At this time I assume that this work with SQLAlchemy and couchdbkit's models. So I guess it's also usable with RDF stuff. I will try soon.

There is two controllers: RESTController and ModelsController. RESTController render a CRUD interface for a single model. ModelsController render an admin UI for all models found.

This is highly customisable. You just need to change one template.

Have a look at the documentation to read more about that.

fa.jquery

fa.jquery is a standalone package that provide a set of widgets based on jquery.ui. Have a look at the demo page. It also have a plugin registry to allow you to write your own widgets with a few lines of javascript.

You can change the default jquery.ui theme (redmond) and use your own. jquery.ui provide a theme editor

Shabti

Shabti is a set of pylons templates initiated by Graham Higgins. There is now a FormAlchemy template in Shabti to quick initialize a pylons project with FormAlchemy and fa.jquery. The template also initialize a CRUD interface in the admin controller for you.

Here is some screenshots of the admin UI using fa.jquery:

User listing:

User edit form:

Notice that at this time Shabti require pylons-dev.

An now...

So what future for FormAlchemy ? This is not discussed yet but I like to reduce the amount of code. This mean using external dependencies.

FormAlchemy have a helpers.py module which mostly came from WebHelpers so I guess we can remove it and use WebHelpers instead.

FormAlchemy's validation stuff is simple but FormEncode is popular and powerful so it can be a good thing to use it for validation stuff.

I also like to add some pylons related stuff in fa.jquery to improve the CRUD interface. For example adding some ajax stuff to allow to add new record from a relation widget and maybe inline editing.

Last thing. At this time I'm the only contributor. Alex and Jonathan don't have time to contribute or are involved in other projects. If you like to contribute you can fork the FormAlchemy repository on bitbucket and use the pull request feature to submit patches. (Google code still to be the official repository) But please, FormAlchemy is a well tested library so run the tests before patch submission and be sure that your changes will don't break anything. Well tested patches are always welcome. Thanks !

That's it for now. Hope you're enjoyed it.