User guide

Base concepts

In μMongo 3 worlds are considered:

Client world

This is the data from outside μMongo, it can be a JSON dict from your web framework (i.g. request.get_json() with flask or json.loads(request.raw_post_data) in django) or it could be a regular Python dict with Python-typed data.

JSON dict example

>>> {"str_field": "hello world", "int_field": 42, "date_field": "2015-01-01T00:00:00Z"}

Python dict example

>>> {"str_field": "hello world", "int_field": 42, "date_field": datetime(2015, 1, 1)}

To be integrated into μMongo, those data need to be deserialized and to leave μMongo they need to be serialized (under the hood μMongo uses marshmallow schema).

The deserialization operation is done automatically when instantiating a umongo.Document. The serialization is done when calling umongo.Document.dump() on a document instance.

Object Oriented world

umongo.Document allows you to work with your data as objects and to guarantee their validity against a model.

First let’s define a document with few umongo.fields

@instance.register
class Dog(Document):
    name = fields.StrField(required=True)
    breed = fields.StrField(default="Mongrel")
    birthday = fields.DateTimeField()

Don’t pay attention to the @instance.register for now.

Note that each field can be customized with special attributes like required (which is pretty self-explanatory) or default (if the field is missing during deserialization it will take this value).

Now we can play back and forth between OO and client worlds

>>> client_data = {'name': 'Odwin', 'birthday': '2001-09-22T00:00:00Z'}
>>> odwin = Dog(**client_data)
>>> odwin.breed
"Mongrel"
>>> odwin.birthday
datetime.datetime(2001, 9, 22, 0, 0)
>>> odwin.breed = "Labrador"
>>> odwin.dump()
{'birthday': '2001-09-22T00:00:00+00:00', 'breed': 'Labrador', 'name': 'Odwin'}

Note

You can access the data as attribute (i.g. odwin.name) or as item (i.g. odwin['name']). The latter is specially useful if one of your field name clashes with umongo.Document’s attributes.

OO world enforces model validation for each modification

>>> odwin.bad_field = 42
[...]
AttributeError: bad_field
>>> odwin.birthday = "not_a_date"
[...]
ValidationError: "Not a valid datetime."

Object orientation means inheritance, of course you can do that

@instance.register
class Animal(Document):
    breed = fields.StrField()
    birthday = fields.DateTimeField()

    class Meta:
        abstract = True

@instance.register
class Dog(Animal):
    name = fields.StrField(required=True)

@instance.register
class Duck(Animal):
    pass

The Meta subclass is used (along with inherited Meta classes from parent documents) to configure the document class, you can access this final config through the opts attribute.

Here we use this to allow Animal to be inherited and to make it abstract.

>>> Animal.opts
<DocumentOpts(instance=<umongo.frameworks.PyMongoInstance object at 0x7efe7daa9320>, template=<Document template class '__main__.Animal'>, abstract=True, collection_name=None, is_child=False, base_schema_cls=<class 'umongo.schema.Schema'>, indexes=[], offspring={<Implementation class '__main__.Duck'>, <Implementation class '__main__.Dog'>})>
>>> Dog.opts
<DocumentOpts(instance=<umongo.frameworks.PyMongoInstance object at 0x7efe7daa9320>, template=<Document template class '__main__.Dog'>, abstract=False, collection_name=dog, is_child=False, base_schema_cls=<class 'umongo.schema.Schema'>, indexes=[], offspring=set())>
>>> class NotAllowedSubDog(Dog): pass
[...]
DocumentDefinitionError: Document <class '__main__.Dog'> doesn't allow inheritance
>>> Animal(breed="Mutant")
[...]
AbstractDocumentError: Cannot instantiate an abstract Document

Mongo world

Mongo world consist of data returned in a format suitable for a MongoDB driver (pymongo for instance).

>>> odwin.to_mongo()
{'birthday': datetime.datetime(2001, 9, 22, 0, 0), 'name': 'Odwin'}

In this case, the data is unchanged. Let’s consider something more complex:

@instance.register
class Dog(Document):
    name = fields.StrField(attribute='_id')

We use the name of the dog as our _id key, but for readability we keep it as name inside our document.

>>> odwin = Dog(name='Odwin')
>>> odwin.dump()
{'name': 'Odwin'}
>>> odwin.to_mongo()
{'_id': 'Odwin'}
>>> Dog.build_from_mongo({'_id': 'Scruffy'}).dump()
{'name': 'Scruffy'}

Note

If no field refers to _id in the document, a dump-only field id will be automatically added:

>>> class AutoId(Document):
...     pass
>>> AutoId.find_one()
<object Document __main__.AutoId({'id': ObjectId('5714b9a61d41c8feb01222c8')})>

To retrieve the _id field whatever its name is, use the pk property:

>>> odwin.pk
'Odwin'
>>> Duck().pk
None

Most of the time, the user doesn’t need to use to_mongo directly. It is called internally by umongo.Document.commit`() which is the method used to commit changes to the database.

>>> odwin = Dog(name='Odwin', breed='Labrador')
>>> odwin.commit()

μMongo provides access to Object Oriented versions of driver methods:

>>> Dog.find()
<umongo.dal.pymongo.WrappedCursor object at 0x7f169851ba68>
>>> next(Dog.find())
<object Document __main__.Dog({'id': 'Odwin', 'breed': 'Labrador'})>
Dog.find_one({'_id': 'Odwin'})
<object Document __main__.Dog({'id': 'Odwin', 'breed': 'Labrador'})>

The user can also access the collection used by the document at any time to perform more low-level operations:

>>> Dog.collection
Collection(Database(MongoClient(host=['localhost:27017'], document_class=dict, tz_aware=False, connect=True), 'test'), 'dog')

Note

By default the collection to use is the snake-cased version of the document’s name (e.g. Dog => dog, HTTPError => http_error). However, you can configure, through the Meta class, the collection to use for a document with the collection_name meta attribute.

Multi-driver support

The idea behind μMongo is to allow the same document definition to be used with different MongoDB drivers.

To achieve that the user only defines document templates. Templates which will be implemented when registered by an instance:

Basically an instance provide three informations:

• the mongoDB driver type to use
• the database to use
• the implemented documents

This way a template can be implemented by multiple instances, this can be useful for example to:

• store the same documents in differents databases
• define an instance with async driver for a web server and a sync one for shell interactions

Here’s how to create and use an instance:

>>> from umongo.frameworks import PyMongoInstance
>>> import pymongo
>>> con = pymongo.MongoClient()
>>> instance1 = PyMongoInstance(con.db1)
>>> instance2 = PyMongoInstance(con.db2)

Now we can define & register documents, then work with them:

>>> class Dog(Document):
...     pass
>>> Dog  # mark as a template in repr
<Template class '__main__.Dog'>
>>> Dog.is_template
True
>>> DogInstance1Impl = instance1.register(Dog)
>>> DogInstance1Impl  # mark as an implementation in repr
<Implementation class '__main__.Dog'>
>>> DogInstance1Impl.is_template
False
>>> DogInstance2Impl = instance2.register(Dog)
>>> DogInstance1Impl().commit()
>>> DogInstance1Impl.count_documents()
1
>>> DogInstance2Impl.count_documents()
0

Note

In most cases, only a single instance is used. In this case, one can use instance.register as a decoration to replace the template by its implementation.

>>> @instance.register
... class Dog(Document):
...     pass
>>> Dog().commit()

Note

In real-life applications, the driver connection details may not be known when registering models. For instance, when using the Flask app factory pattern, one will instantiate the instance and register model documents at import time, then pass the database connection at app init time. This can be achieved with the set_db method. No database interaction can be performed until a database connection is set.

>>> from umongo.frameworks import TxMongoInstance
>>> # Don't pass a database connection when instantiating the instance
>>> instance = TxMongoInstance()
>>> @instance.register
... class Dog(Document):
...     pass
>>> # Don't try to use Dog (except for inheritance) yet
>>> # A database connection must be set first
>>> db = create_txmongo_database()
>>> instance.set_db(db)
>>> # Now instance is ready
>>> yield Dog().commit()

For the moment all examples have been done with pymongo. Things are pretty much the same with other drivers, just configure the instance and you’re good to go:

>>> from umongo.frameworks import MotorAsyncIOInstance
>>> db = motor.motor_asyncio.AsyncIOMotorClient()['umongo_test']
>>> instance = MotorAsyncIOInstance(db)
>>> @instance.register
... class Dog(Document):
...     name = fields.StrField(attribute='_id')
...     breed = fields.StrField(default="Mongrel")

Of course the way you’ll be calling methods will differ:

>>> odwin = Dog(name='Odwin', breed='Labrador')
>>> yield from odwin.commit()
>>> dogs = yield from Dog.find()

Inheritance

Inheritance inside the same collection is achieve by adding a _cls field (accessible in the document as cls) in the document stored in MongoDB

>>> @instance.register
... class Parent(Document):
...     unique_in_parent = fields.IntField(unique=True)
>>> @instance.register
... class Child(Parent):
...     unique_in_child = fields.StrField(unique=True)
>>> child = Child(unique_in_parent=42, unique_in_child='forty_two')
>>> child.cls
'Child'
>>> child.dump()
{'cls': 'Child', 'unique_in_parent': 42, 'unique_in_child': 'forty_two'}
>>> Parent(unique_in_parent=22).dump()
{'unique_in_parent': 22}
>>> [x.document for x in Parent.indexes]
[{'key': SON([('unique_in_parent', 1)]), 'name': 'unique_in_parent_1', 'sparse': True, 'unique': True}]

Warning

You must register a parent before its child inside a given instance.

Due to the way document instances are created from templates, fields and pre/post_dump/load methods can only be inherited from mixin classes by explicitly using a umongo.MixinDocument.

@instance.register
class TimeMixin(MixinDocument):
    date_created = fields.DateTimeField()
    date_modified = fields.DateTimeField()

@instance.register
class MyDocument(Document, TimeMixin)
    name = fields.StringField()

A umongo.MixinDocument can be inherited by both umongo.Document and umongo.EmbeddedDocument classes.

Indexes

Warning

Indexes must be first submitted to MongoDB. To do so you should call umongo.Document.ensure_indexes() once for each document.

In fields, unique attribute is implicitly handled by an index:

>>> @instance.register
... class WithUniqueEmail(Document):
...     email = fields.StrField(unique=True)
>>> [x.document for x in WithUniqueEmail.indexes]
[{'key': SON([('email', 1)]), 'name': 'email_1', 'sparse': True, 'unique': True}]
>>> WithUniqueEmail.ensure_indexes()
>>> WithUniqueEmail().commit()
>>> WithUniqueEmail().commit()
[...]
ValidationError: {'email': 'Field value must be unique'}

Note

The index params also depend of the required, null field attributes

For more custom indexes, the Meta.indexes attribute should be used:

>>> @instance.register
... class CustomIndexes(Document):
...     name = fields.StrField()
...     age = fields.Int()
...     class Meta:
...         indexes = ('#name', 'age', ('-age', 'name'))
>>> [x.document for x in CustomIndexes.indexes]
[{'key': SON([('name', 'hashed')]), 'name': 'name_hashed'},
 {'key': SON([('age', 1), ]), 'name': 'age_1'},
 {'key': SON([('age', -1), ('name', 1)]), 'name': 'age_-1_name_1'}

Note

Meta.indexes should use the names of the fields as they appear in database (i.g. given a field nick = StrField(attribute='nk'), you refer to it in Meta.indexes as nk)

Indexes can be passed as:

• a string with an optional direction prefix (i.g. "my_field")
• a list of string with optional direction prefix for compound indexes (i.g. ["field1", "-field2"])
• a pymongo.IndexModel object
• a dict used to instantiate an pymongo.IndexModel for custom configuration (i.g. {'key': ['field1', 'field2'], 'expireAfterSeconds': 42})

Allowed direction prefix are:

• + for ascending
• - for descending
• $ for text
• # for hashed

Note

If no direction prefix is passed, ascending is assumed

In case of a field defined in a child document, its index is automatically compounded with _cls

>>> @instance.register
... class Parent(Document):
...     unique_in_parent = fields.IntField(unique=True)
>>> @instance.register
... class Child(Parent):
...     unique_in_child = fields.StrField(unique=True)
...     class Meta:
...         indexes = ['#unique_in_parent']
>>> [x.document for x in Child.indexes]
[{'name': 'unique_in_parent_1', 'sparse': True, 'unique': True, 'key': SON([('unique_in_parent', 1)])},
 {'name': 'unique_in_parent_hashed__cls_1', 'key': SON([('unique_in_parent', 'hashed'), ('_cls', 1)])},
 {'name': '_cls_1', 'key': SON([('_cls', 1)])},
 {'name': 'unique_in_child_1__cls_1', 'sparse': True, 'unique': True, 'key': SON([('unique_in_child', 1), ('_cls', 1)])}]

I18n

μMongo provides a simple way to work with i18n (internationalization) through the umongo.set_gettext(), for example to use python’s default gettext:

from umongo import set_gettext
from gettext import gettext
set_gettext(gettext)

This way each error message will be passed to the custom gettext function in order for it to return the localized version of it.

See examples/flask for a working example of i18n with flask-babel.

Note

To set up i18n inside your app, you should start with messages.pot which is a translation template of all the messages used in umongo (and it dependancy marshmallow).

Marshmallow integration

Under the hood, μMongo heavily uses marshmallow for all its data validation work.

However an ODM has some special needs (i.g. handling required fields through MongoDB’s unique indexes) that force to extend marshmallow base types.

In short, you should not try to use marshmallow base types (marshmallow.Schema, marshmallow.fields.Field or marshmallow.validate.Validator for instance) in a μMongo document but instead use their μMongo equivalents (respectively umongo.abstract.BaseSchema, umongo.abstract.BaseField and umongo.abstract.BaseValidator).

In the Base concepts paragraph, the schema contains a little simplification. According to it, the client and OO worlds are made of the same data, but only in a different form (serialized vs object oriented). However, quite often, the application API doesn’t strictly exposes the datamodel (e.g. you don’t want to display or allow modification of the passwords in your /users route).

Back to our Dog document. In real life one can rename your dog but not change its breed. The user API should have a schema that enforces this.

>>> DogMaSchema = Dog.schema.as_marshmallow_schema()

as_marshmallow_schema convert the original µMongo schema into a pure marshmallow schema that can be subclassed and customized:

>>> class PatchDogSchema(DogMaSchema):
...     class Meta:
...         fields = ('name', )
>>> patch_dog_schema = PatchDogSchema()
>>> patch_dog_schema.load({'name': 'Scruffy', 'breed': 'Golden retriever'}).errors
{'_schema': ['Unknown field name breed.']}
>>> ret = patch_dog_schema.load({'name': 'Scruffy'})
>>> ret
{'name': 'Scruffy'}

Finally we can integrate the validated data into OO world:

>>> my_dog.update(ret)
>>> my_dog.name
'Scruffy'

This works great when you want to add special behaviors depending of the situation. For more simple usecases we could use the marshmallow pre/post precessors . For example to simply customize the dump:

>>> from umongo import post_dump  # same as `from marshmallow import post_dump`
>>> @instance.register
... class Dog(Document):
...     name = fields.StrField(required=True)
...     breed = fields.StrField(default="Mongrel")
...     birthday = fields.DateTimeField()
...     @post_dump
...     def customize_dump(self, data):
...         data['name'] = data['name'].capitalize()
...         data['brief'] = "Hi ! My name is %s and I'm a %s" % (data['name'], data['breed'])"
...
>>> Dog(name='scruffy').dump()
{'name': 'Scruffy', 'breed': 'Mongrel', 'brief': "Hi ! My name is Scruffy and I'm a Mongrel"}

Now let’s imagine we want to allow the per-breed creation of a massive number of ducks. The API would accept a really different format than our datamodel:

{
    'breeds': [
        {'name': 'Mandarin Duck', 'births': ['2016-08-29T00:00:00', '2016-08-31T00:00:00', ...]},
        {'name': 'Mallard', 'births': ['2016-08-27T00:00:00', ...]},
        ...
    ]
}

Starting from the µMongo schema would not help, but one can create a new schema using pure marshmallow fields generated with the umongo.BaseField.dump.as_marshmallow_field() method:

>>> MassiveBreedSchema(marshmallow.Schema):
...     name = Duck.schema.fields['breed'].as_marshmallow_field()
...     births = marshmallow.fields.List(
...         Duck.schema.fields['birthday'].as_marshmallow_field())
>>> MassiveDuckSchema(marshmallow.Schema):
...     breeds = marshmallow.fields.List(marshmallow.fields.Nested(MassiveBreedSchema))

Note

A custom marshmallow schema umongo.schema.RemoveMissingSchema can be used instead of regular marshmallow.Schema to skip missing fields when dumping a umongo.Document object.

try:
    data, _ = MassiveDuckSchema().load(payload)
    ducks = []
    for breed in data['breeds']:
        for birthday in breed['births']:
            duck = Duck(breed=breed['name']), birthday=birthday)
            duck.commit()
            ducks.append(duck)
except ValidationError as e:
    # Error handling
    ...

Note

Field’s missing and default attributes are not handled the

same in marshmallow and umongo.

In marshmallow default contains the value to use during serialization (i.e. calling schema.dump(doc)) and missing the value for deserialization.

In umongo however there is only a default attribute which will be used when creating (or loading from user world) a document where this field is missing. This is because you don’t need to control how umongo will store the document in mongo world.

So when you use as_marshmallow_field, the resulting marshmallow field’s missing``&``default will be by default both infered from the umongo’s default field. You can overwrite this behavior by using marshmallow_missing/marshmallow_default attributes:

@instance.register
class Employee(Document):
    name = fields.StrField(default='John Doe')
    birthday = fields.DateTimeField(marshmallow_missing=dt.datetime(2000, 1, 1))
    # You can use `missing` singleton to overwrite `default` field inference
    skill = fields.StrField(default='Dummy', marshmallow_default=missing)

ret = Employee.schema.as_marshmallow_schema()().load({})
assert ret == {'name': 'John Doe', 'birthday': datetime(2000, 1, 1, 0, 0, tzinfo=tzutc()), 'skill': 'Dummy'}
ret = Employee.schema.as_marshmallow_schema()().dump({})
assert ret == {'name': 'John Doe', 'birthday': '2000-01-01T00:00:00+00:00'}  # Note `skill` hasn't been serialized

It can be useful to let all the generated marshmallow schemas inherit a custom base schema class. For instance to customize this base schema using a Meta class.

This can be done by defining a custom base schema class and passing it as a class attribute to a custom umongo.Document subclass.

Since the default base schema is umongo.abstract.BaseMarshmallowSchema, it makes sense to build from here.

class BaseMaSchema(umongo.abstract.BaseMarshmallowSchema):
   class Meta:
      ...  # Add custom attributes here

   # Implement custom methods here
   def custom_method(self):
      ...

 @instance.register
 class MyDocument(Document):
   MA_BASE_SCHEMA_CLS = BaseMaSchema

This is done at document level, but it is possible to do it in a custom base Document class to avoid duplication.

Field validate & io_validate

Fields can be configured with special validators through the validate attribute:

from umongo import Document, fields, validate

@instance.register
class Employee(Document):
    name = fields.StrField(validate=[validate.Length(max=120), validate.Regexp(r"[a-zA-Z ']+")])
    age = fields.IntField(validate=validate.Range(min=18, max=65))
    email = fields.StrField(validate=validate.Email())
    type = fields.StrField(validate=validate.OneOf(['private', 'sergeant', 'general']))

Those validators will be enforced each time a field is modified:

>>> john = Employee(name='John Rambo')
>>> john.age = 99  # it's not his war anymore...
[...]
ValidationError: ['Must be between 18 and 65.']

Validators may need to query the database (e.g. to validate a umongo.data_objects.Reference). For this need one can use the io_validate argument. It should be a function (or a list of functions) that will do database access in accordance with the chosen mongodb driver.

For example with Motor-asyncio driver, io_validate’s functions will be wrapped by asyncio.coroutine and called with yield from.

from motor.motor_asyncio import AsyncIOMotorClient
from umongo.frameworks import MotorAsyncIOInstance
db = AsyncIOMotorClient().test
instance = MotorAsyncIOInstance(db)

@instance.register
class TrendyActivity(Document):
    name = fields.StrField()


@instance.register
class Job(Document):

    def _is_dream_job(field, value):
        if not (yield from TrendyActivity.find_one(name=value)):
            raise ValidationError("No way I'm doing this !")

    activity = fields.StrField(io_validate=_is_dream_job)


@asyncio.coroutine
def run():
    yield from TrendyActivity(name='Pythoning').commit()
    yield from Job(activity='Pythoning').commit()
    yield from Job(activity='Javascripting...').commit()
    # raises ValidationError: {'activity': ["No way I'm doing this !"]}

Warning

When converting to marshmallow with as_marshmallow_schema and as_marshmallow_fields, io_validate attribute will not be preserved.