--- a/doc/book/en/development/devcore/dbapi.rst Thu Apr 08 17:47:52 2010 +0200
+++ b/doc/book/en/development/devcore/dbapi.rst Thu Apr 08 17:50:37 2010 +0200
@@ -5,9 +5,10 @@
The Python API developped to interface with RQL is inspired from the standard db-api,
with a Connection object having the methods cursor, rollback and commit essentially.
-The most important method is the `execute` method of a cursor :
+The most important method is the `execute` method of a cursor.
-`execute(rqlstring, args=None, cachekey=None, build_descr=True)`
+.. sourcecode:: python
+ execute(rqlstring, args=None, cachekey=None, build_descr=True)
:rqlstring: the RQL query to execute (unicode)
:args: if the query contains substitutions, a dictionary containing the values to use
@@ -18,10 +19,11 @@
through this argument
-The `Connection` object owns the methods `commit` and `rollback`. You *should
-never need to use them* during the development of the web interface based on
-the *CubicWeb* framework as it determines the end of the transaction depending
-on the query execution success.
+The `Connection` object owns the methods `commit` and `rollback`. You
+*should never need to use them* during the development of the web
+interface based on the *CubicWeb* framework as it determines the end
+of the transaction depending on the query execution success. They are
+however useful in other contexts such as tests.
.. note::
While executing update queries (SET, INSERT, DELETE), if a query generates
@@ -30,6 +32,7 @@
Executing RQL queries from a view or a hook
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
When you're within code of the web interface, the db-api like connexion is
handled by the request object. You should not have to access it directly, but
use the `execute` method directly available on the request, eg:
@@ -50,21 +53,15 @@
self._cw.execute('Any T WHERE T in_conf C, C eid %s' % entity.eid)
-But it can also be written in a syntax that will benefit from the use
+But it must be written in a syntax that will benefit from the use
of a cache on the RQL server side:
.. sourcecode:: python
- self._cw.execute('Any T WHERE T in_conf C, C eid %(x)s', {'x': entity.eid}, 'x')
+ self._cw.execute('Any T WHERE T in_conf C, C eid %(x)s', {'x': entity.eid})
-Beside proper usage of the `args` argument, notice the latest argument: this is what's called
-the cache key. The cache key should be either a string or a tuple containing the names of keys
-in args which are referencing eids. *YOU MUST SET THIS PROPERLY* if you don't want weird result
-on queries which have ambigous solutions deambiguified by specifing an eid. So the good habit is:
-*always put in the cache key all eid keys*.
-
-The syntax tree is build once for the "generic" RQL and can be re-used
-with a number of different eid.
+The syntax tree is built once for the "generic" RQL and can be re-used
+with a number of different eids.
Alternativelly, some of the common data related to an entity can be obtained from
the top-level `entity.related()` method (which is used under the hood by the orm