Re: [Modeling-users] API cleanup proposal

[Jerome K. <Jer...@fi...>]

Mario Ruggier wrote:


Hum .. A general note about aliasing methods: In fact
I use a couple of tools for test (SQLObject / MiddleKit/
and Modeling) so as MiddleKit and Modeling try to
monkey EOF, it use the same method names like
insertObject() .. so for me staying closer to EOF is a good
thing .

>>   - make fetchCount() an alias for objectsCountWithFetchSpecification()
>>       [same API as fetch()]
>
>
> Hmmn, I would not introduce such a specialized method (will become
> clutter even in the short term). As suggested earlier, it may be more
> flexible to just have a fetchSql() open method for now (that is not
> necessarily db-independent) and that returns whatever the dbapi
> returns.  For me nothing is gained by having fetchCount('customobjname')
> over fetchSql('select count(*) from tblname') -- it is jn fact less 
> flexibe.
> When the time comes to generailize this to be db-independant, either
> the fetch() method will gain new parameters to allow this, or other
> generic methods introduced, such as fetchRaw, fetchTuples, fetchDicts,
> or whatever. fetchSql can always have a use, though, so it it not likely
> to become clutter. 


I guess you miss something Mario.
Let's take a example .
qualifier=qualifierWithQualifierFormat('lastName=="Hugo"')
 fetchSpec=FetchSpecification(entityName='Writer', qualifier=qualifier)

fetchCount(fetchSpec) will return the number of writer with lastname = 
'Hugo' ..
and so on this is not so trivial as a simple 'select count(*) ..'

so the answer is no : fetchCount() and fetchSql() haven't the same 
purpose, even
is you can use fetSQL to do a fetchCount() or anything else.


And i really like the OO approach of modeling, and i really think that
even fetchSQL() ( which for me should be fetchSQLObject() ) should
alway return a object.

Take a look at this:
- in the model you describe the object mapping (which is not a real object
   but only a "result object" .  
   for example:
    CustomSearch
           - searchString()
           - books relation one-> many
           - ...
- I thinks we should find a way to do
ec.objectsWithFetchSpecification('CustomSearch, ..searchString = 'Toto') ..
and so provide a method to do some special SQL in the CustomSearch()  which
return CustomSearch object.

But this way you can do something like
search = CustomSearch(...)
books = search.getBooks() ( which return some books object .. not raw SQL)







>> Future enhancements
>> -------------------
>>
>>   Interesting future features (NOT included in this proposal) have been
>>   proposed in this thread, including:
>>
>>     - fetchSQL(): the possibility to pass a raw sql query to build
>>       objects, 
>

To build Objects or raw SQL ?

Perhaps we can take a look on how SQLObject do that ?

>>
>>     - the ability to fetch raw rows (i.e. raw dict) rather than
>>       fully-initialized objects,
>>
yeah ..



Bye Bye ..