Defining Views

A view callable in a Pyramid application is typically a simple Python function that accepts a single parameter named request. A view callable is assumed to return a response object.

The request object has a dictionary as an attribute named matchdict. A matchdict maps the placeholders in the matching URL pattern to the substrings of the path in the request URL. For instance, if a call to pyramid.config.Configurator.add_route() has the pattern /{one}/{two}, and a user visits http://example.com/foo/bar, our pattern would be matched against /foo/bar and the matchdict would look like {'one':'foo', 'two':'bar'}.

Declaring Dependencies in Our setup.py File

The view code in our application will depend on a package which is not a dependency of the original "tutorial" application. The original "tutorial" application was generated by the pcreate command; it doesn't know about our custom application requirements.

We need to add a dependency on the docutils package to our tutorial package's setup.py file by assigning this dependency to the requires parameter in the setup() function.

Open tutorial/setup.py and edit it to look like the following:

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import os

from setuptools import setup, find_packages

here = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__))
with open(os.path.join(here, 'README.txt')) as f:
    README = f.read()
with open(os.path.join(here, 'CHANGES.txt')) as f:
    CHANGES = f.read()

requires = [
    'pyramid',
    'pyramid_chameleon',
    'pyramid_debugtoolbar',
    'pyramid_tm',
    'SQLAlchemy',
    'transaction',
    'zope.sqlalchemy',
    'waitress',
    'docutils',
    ]

setup(name='tutorial',
      version='0.0',
      description='tutorial',
      long_description=README + '\n\n' + CHANGES,
      classifiers=[
        "Programming Language :: Python",
        "Framework :: Pyramid",
        "Topic :: Internet :: WWW/HTTP",
        "Topic :: Internet :: WWW/HTTP :: WSGI :: Application",
        ],
      author='',
      author_email='',
      url='',
      keywords='web wsgi bfg pylons pyramid',
      packages=find_packages(),
      include_package_data=True,
      zip_safe=False,
      test_suite='tutorial',
      install_requires=requires,
      entry_points="""\
      [paste.app_factory]
      main = tutorial:main
      [console_scripts]
      initialize_tutorial_db = tutorial.scripts.initializedb:main
      """,
      )

Only the highlighted line needs to be added.

Running setup.py develop

Since a new software dependency was added, you will need to run python setup.py develop again inside the root of the tutorial package to obtain and register the newly added dependency distribution.

Make sure your current working directory is the root of the project (the directory in which setup.py lives) and execute the following command.

On UNIX:

$ cd tutorial
$ $VENV/bin/python setup.py develop

On Windows:

c:\pyramidtut> cd tutorial
c:\pyramidtut\tutorial> %VENV%\Scripts\python setup.py develop

Success executing this command will end with a line to the console something like:

Finished processing dependencies for tutorial==0.0

Adding view functions in views.py

It's time for a major change. Open tutorial/tutorial/views.py and edit it to look like the following:

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import cgi
import re
from docutils.core import publish_parts

from pyramid.httpexceptions import (
    HTTPFound,
    HTTPNotFound,
    )

from pyramid.view import view_config

from .models import (
    DBSession,
    Page,
    )

# regular expression used to find WikiWords
wikiwords = re.compile(r"\b([A-Z]\w+[A-Z]+\w+)")

@view_config(route_name='view_wiki')
def view_wiki(request):
    return HTTPFound(location = request.route_url('view_page',
                                                  pagename='FrontPage'))

@view_config(route_name='view_page', renderer='templates/view.pt')
def view_page(request):
    pagename = request.matchdict['pagename']
    page = DBSession.query(Page).filter_by(name=pagename).first()
    if page is None:
        return HTTPNotFound('No such page')

    def check(match):
        word = match.group(1)
        exists = DBSession.query(Page).filter_by(name=word).all()
        if exists:
            view_url = request.route_url('view_page', pagename=word)
            return '<a href="%s">%s</a>' % (view_url, cgi.escape(word))
        else:
            add_url = request.route_url('add_page', pagename=word)
            return '<a href="%s">%s</a>' % (add_url, cgi.escape(word))

    content = publish_parts(page.data, writer_name='html')['html_body']
    content = wikiwords.sub(check, content)
    edit_url = request.route_url('edit_page', pagename=pagename)
    return dict(page=page, content=content, edit_url=edit_url)

@view_config(route_name='add_page', renderer='templates/edit.pt')
def add_page(request):
    pagename = request.matchdict['pagename']
    if 'form.submitted' in request.params:
        body = request.params['body']
        page = Page(name=pagename, data=body)
        DBSession.add(page)
        return HTTPFound(location = request.route_url('view_page',
                                                      pagename=pagename))
    save_url = request.route_url('add_page', pagename=pagename)
    page = Page(name='', data='')
    return dict(page=page, save_url=save_url)

@view_config(route_name='edit_page', renderer='templates/edit.pt')
def edit_page(request):
    pagename = request.matchdict['pagename']
    page = DBSession.query(Page).filter_by(name=pagename).one()
    if 'form.submitted' in request.params:
        page.data = request.params['body']
        DBSession.add(page)
        return HTTPFound(location = request.route_url('view_page',
                                                      pagename=pagename))
    return dict(
        page=page,
        save_url = request.route_url('edit_page', pagename=pagename),
        )

The highlighted lines need to be added or edited.

We added some imports and created a regular expression to find "WikiWords".

We got rid of the my_view view function and its decorator that was added when we originally rendered the alchemy scaffold. It was only an example and isn't relevant to our application.

Then we added four view callable functions to our views.py module:

  • view_wiki() - Displays the wiki itself. It will answer on the root URL.
  • view_page() - Displays an individual page.
  • add_page() - Allows the user to add a page.
  • edit_page() - Allows the user to edit a page.

We'll describe each one briefly in the following sections.

Note

There is nothing special about the filename views.py. A project may have many view callables throughout its codebase in arbitrarily named files. Files implementing view callables often have view in their filenames (or may live in a Python subpackage of your application package named views), but this is only by convention.

The view_wiki view function

Following is the code for the view_wiki view function and its decorator:

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@view_config(route_name='view_wiki')
def view_wiki(request):
    return HTTPFound(location = request.route_url('view_page',
                                                  pagename='FrontPage'))

view_wiki() is the default view that gets called when a request is made to the root URL of our wiki. It always redirects to an URL which represents the path to our "FrontPage".

The view_wiki view callable always redirects to the URL of a Page resource named "FrontPage". To do so, it returns an instance of the pyramid.httpexceptions.HTTPFound class (instances of which implement the pyramid.interfaces.IResponse interface, like pyramid.response.Response does). It uses the pyramid.request.Request.route_url() API to construct an URL to the FrontPage page (i.e., http://localhost:6543/FrontPage), and uses it as the "location" of the HTTPFound response, forming an HTTP redirect.

The view_page view function

Here is the code for the view_page view function and its decorator:

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@view_config(route_name='view_page', renderer='templates/view.pt')
def view_page(request):
    pagename = request.matchdict['pagename']
    page = DBSession.query(Page).filter_by(name=pagename).first()
    if page is None:
        return HTTPNotFound('No such page')

    def check(match):
        word = match.group(1)
        exists = DBSession.query(Page).filter_by(name=word).all()
        if exists:
            view_url = request.route_url('view_page', pagename=word)
            return '<a href="%s">%s</a>' % (view_url, cgi.escape(word))
        else:
            add_url = request.route_url('add_page', pagename=word)
            return '<a href="%s">%s</a>' % (add_url, cgi.escape(word))

    content = publish_parts(page.data, writer_name='html')['html_body']
    content = wikiwords.sub(check, content)
    edit_url = request.route_url('edit_page', pagename=pagename)
    return dict(page=page, content=content, edit_url=edit_url)

view_page() is used to display a single page of our wiki. It renders the reStructuredText body of a page (stored as the data attribute of a Page model object) as HTML. Then it substitutes an HTML anchor for each WikiWord reference in the rendered HTML using a compiled regular expression.

The curried function named check is used as the first argument to wikiwords.sub, indicating that it should be called to provide a value for each WikiWord match found in the content. If the wiki already contains a page with the matched WikiWord name, check() generates a view link to be used as the substitution value and returns it. If the wiki does not already contain a page with the matched WikiWord name, check() generates an "add" link as the substitution value and returns it.

As a result, the content variable is now a fully formed bit of HTML containing various view and add links for WikiWords based on the content of our current page object.

We then generate an edit URL because it's easier to do here than in the template, and we return a dictionary with a number of arguments. The fact that view_page() returns a dictionary (as opposed to a response object) is a cue to Pyramid that it should try to use a renderer associated with the view configuration to render a response. In our case, the renderer used will be the templates/view.pt template, as indicated in the @view_config decorator that is applied to view_page().

The add_page view function

Here is the code for the add_page view function and its decorator:

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@view_config(route_name='add_page', renderer='templates/edit.pt')
def add_page(request):
    pagename = request.matchdict['pagename']
    if 'form.submitted' in request.params:
        body = request.params['body']
        page = Page(name=pagename, data=body)
        DBSession.add(page)
        return HTTPFound(location = request.route_url('view_page',
                                                      pagename=pagename))
    save_url = request.route_url('add_page', pagename=pagename)
    page = Page(name='', data='')
    return dict(page=page, save_url=save_url)

add_page() is invoked when a user clicks on a WikiWord which isn't yet represented as a page in the system. The check function within the view_page view generates URLs to this view. add_page() also acts as a handler for the form that is generated when we want to add a page object. The matchdict attribute of the request passed to the add_page() view will have the values we need to construct URLs and find model objects.

The matchdict will have a 'pagename' key that matches the name of the page we'd like to add. If our add view is invoked via, e.g., http://localhost:6543/add_page/SomeName, the value for 'pagename' in the matchdict will be 'SomeName'.

If the view execution is a result of a form submission (i.e., the expression 'form.submitted' in request.params is True), we grab the page body from the form data, create a Page object with this page body and the name taken from matchdict['pagename'], and save it into the database using DBSession.add. We then redirect back to the view_page view for the newly created page.

If the view execution is not a result of a form submission (i.e., the expression 'form.submitted' in request.params is False), the view callable renders a template. To do so, it generates a save_url which the template uses as the form post URL during rendering. We're lazy here, so we're going to use the same template (templates/edit.pt) for the add view as well as the page edit view. To do so we create a dummy Page object in order to satisfy the edit form's desire to have some page object exposed as page. Pyramid will render the template associated with this view to a response.

The edit_page view function

Here is the code for the edit_page view function and its decorator:

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@view_config(route_name='edit_page', renderer='templates/edit.pt')
def edit_page(request):
    pagename = request.matchdict['pagename']
    page = DBSession.query(Page).filter_by(name=pagename).one()
    if 'form.submitted' in request.params:
        page.data = request.params['body']
        DBSession.add(page)
        return HTTPFound(location = request.route_url('view_page',
                                                      pagename=pagename))
    return dict(
        page=page,
        save_url = request.route_url('edit_page', pagename=pagename),
        )

edit_page() is invoked when a user clicks the "Edit this Page" button on the view form. It renders an edit form but it also acts as the handler for the form it renders. The matchdict attribute of the request passed to the edit_page view will have a 'pagename' key matching the name of the page the user wants to edit.

If the view execution is a result of a form submission (i.e., the expression 'form.submitted' in request.params is True), the view grabs the body element of the request parameters and sets it as the data attribute of the page object. It then redirects to the view_page view of the wiki page.

If the view execution is not a result of a form submission (i.e., the expression 'form.submitted' in request.params is False), the view simply renders the edit form, passing the page object and a save_url which will be used as the action of the generated form.

Adding templates

The view_page, add_page and edit_page views that we've added reference a template. Each template is a Chameleon ZPT template. These templates will live in the templates directory of our tutorial package. Chameleon templates must have a .pt extension to be recognized as such.

The view.pt template

Create tutorial/tutorial/templates/view.pt and add the following content:

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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="${request.locale_name}">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <meta name="description" content="pyramid web application">
    <meta name="author" content="Pylons Project">
    <link rel="shortcut icon" href="${request.static_url('tutorial:static/pyramid-16x16.png')}">

    <title>${page.name} - Pyramid tutorial wiki (based on
    TurboGears 20-Minute Wiki)</title>

    <!-- Bootstrap core CSS -->
    <link href="//oss.maxcdn.com/libs/twitter-bootstrap/3.0.3/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet">

    <!-- Custom styles for this scaffold -->
    <link href="${request.static_url('tutorial:static/theme.css')}" rel="stylesheet">

    <!-- HTML5 shim and Respond.js IE8 support of HTML5 elements and media queries -->
    <!--[if lt IE 9]>
      <script src="//oss.maxcdn.com/libs/html5shiv/3.7.0/html5shiv.js"></script>
      <script src="//oss.maxcdn.com/libs/respond.js/1.3.0/respond.min.js"></script>
    <![endif]-->
  </head>
  <body>

    <div class="starter-template">
      <div class="container">
        <div class="row">
          <div class="col-md-2">
            <img class="logo img-responsive" src="${request.static_url('tutorial:static/pyramid.png')}" alt="pyramid web framework">
          </div>
          <div class="col-md-10">
            <div class="content">
              <div tal:replace="structure content">
                Page text goes here.
              </div>
              <p>
                <a tal:attributes="href edit_url" href="">
                  Edit this page
                </a>
              </p>
              <p>
                  Viewing <strong><span tal:replace="page.name">
                  Page Name Goes Here</span></strong>
              </p>
              <p>You can return to the
                <a href="${request.application_url}">FrontPage</a>.
              </p>
            </div>
          </div>
        </div>
        <div class="row">
          <div class="copyright">
            Copyright &copy; Pylons Project
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>


    <!-- Bootstrap core JavaScript
    ================================================== -->
    <!-- Placed at the end of the document so the pages load faster -->
    <script src="//oss.maxcdn.com/libs/jquery/1.10.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
    <script src="//oss.maxcdn.com/libs/twitter-bootstrap/3.0.3/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

This template is used by view_page() for displaying a single wiki page. It includes:

  • A div element that is replaced with the content value provided by the view (lines 36-38). content contains HTML, so the structure keyword is used to prevent escaping it (i.e., changing ">" to "&gt;", etc.)
  • A link that points at the "edit" URL which invokes the edit_page view for the page being viewed (lines 40-42).

The edit.pt template

Create tutorial/tutorial/templates/edit.pt and add the following content:

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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="${request.locale_name}">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <meta name="description" content="pyramid web application">
    <meta name="author" content="Pylons Project">
    <link rel="shortcut icon" href="${request.static_url('tutorial:static/pyramid-16x16.png')}">

    <title>${page.name} - Pyramid tutorial wiki (based on
    TurboGears 20-Minute Wiki)</title>

    <!-- Bootstrap core CSS -->
    <link href="//oss.maxcdn.com/libs/twitter-bootstrap/3.0.3/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet">

    <!-- Custom styles for this scaffold -->
    <link href="${request.static_url('tutorial:static/theme.css')}" rel="stylesheet">

    <!-- HTML5 shim and Respond.js IE8 support of HTML5 elements and media queries -->
    <!--[if lt IE 9]>
      <script src="//oss.maxcdn.com/libs/html5shiv/3.7.0/html5shiv.js"></script>
      <script src="//oss.maxcdn.com/libs/respond.js/1.3.0/respond.min.js"></script>
    <![endif]-->
  </head>
  <body>

    <div class="starter-template">
      <div class="container">
        <div class="row">
          <div class="col-md-2">
            <img class="logo img-responsive" src="${request.static_url('tutorial:static/pyramid.png')}" alt="pyramid web framework">
          </div>
          <div class="col-md-10">
            <div class="content">
              <p>
                Editing <strong><span tal:replace="page.name">Page Name Goes
                Here</span></strong>
              </p>
              <p>You can return to the
                <a href="${request.application_url}">FrontPage</a>.
              </p>
              <form action="${save_url}" method="post">
                <div class="form-group">
                  <textarea class="form-control" name="body" tal:content="page.data" rows="10" cols="60"></textarea>
                </div>
                <div class="form-group">
                  <button type="submit" name="form.submitted" value="Save" class="btn btn-default">Save</button>
                </div>
              </form>
            </div>
          </div>
        </div>
        <div class="row">
          <div class="copyright">
            Copyright &copy; Pylons Project
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>


    <!-- Bootstrap core JavaScript
    ================================================== -->
    <!-- Placed at the end of the document so the pages load faster -->
    <script src="//oss.maxcdn.com/libs/jquery/1.10.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
    <script src="//oss.maxcdn.com/libs/twitter-bootstrap/3.0.3/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

This template is used by add_page() and edit_page() for adding and editing a wiki page. It displays a page containing a form that includes:

  • A 10 row by 60 column textarea field named body that is filled with any existing page data when it is rendered (line 45).
  • A submit button that has the name form.submitted (line 48).

The form POSTs back to the save_url argument supplied by the view (line 43). The view will use the body and form.submitted values.

Note

Our templates use a request object that none of our tutorial views return in their dictionary. request is one of several names that are available "by default" in a template when a template renderer is used. See System Values Used During Rendering for information about other names that are available by default when a template is used as a renderer.

Static Assets

Our templates name static assets, including CSS and images. We don't need to create these files within our package's static directory because they were provided at the time we created the project.

As an example, the CSS file will be accessed via http://localhost:6543/static/theme.css by virtue of the call to the add_static_view directive we've made in the __init__.py file. Any number and type of static assets can be placed in this directory (or subdirectories) and are just referred to by URL or by using the convenience method static_url, e.g., request.static_url('<package>:static/foo.css') within templates.

Adding Routes to __init__.py

The __init__.py file contains pyramid.config.Configurator.add_route() calls which serve to add routes to our application. First, we’ll get rid of the existing route created by the template using the name 'home'. It’s only an example and isn’t relevant to our application.

We then need to add four calls to add_route. Note that the ordering of these declarations is very important. route declarations are matched in the order they're found in the __init__.py file.

  1. Add a declaration which maps the pattern / (signifying the root URL) to the route named view_wiki. It maps to our view_wiki view callable by virtue of the @view_config attached to the view_wiki view function indicating route_name='view_wiki'.
  2. Add a declaration which maps the pattern /{pagename} to the route named view_page. This is the regular view for a page. It maps to our view_page view callable by virtue of the @view_config attached to the view_page view function indicating route_name='view_page'.
  3. Add a declaration which maps the pattern /add_page/{pagename} to the route named add_page. This is the add view for a new page. It maps to our add_page view callable by virtue of the @view_config attached to the add_page view function indicating route_name='add_page'.
  4. Add a declaration which maps the pattern /{pagename}/edit_page to the route named edit_page. This is the edit view for a page. It maps to our edit_page view callable by virtue of the @view_config attached to the edit_page view function indicating route_name='edit_page'.

As a result of our edits, the __init__.py file should look something like:

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from pyramid.config import Configurator
from sqlalchemy import engine_from_config

from .models import (
    DBSession,
    Base,
    )


def main(global_config, **settings):
    """ This function returns a Pyramid WSGI application.
    """
    engine = engine_from_config(settings, 'sqlalchemy.')
    DBSession.configure(bind=engine)
    Base.metadata.bind = engine
    config = Configurator(settings=settings)
    config.include('pyramid_chameleon')
    config.add_static_view('static', 'static', cache_max_age=3600)
    config.add_route('view_wiki', '/')
    config.add_route('view_page', '/{pagename}')
    config.add_route('add_page', '/add_page/{pagename}')
    config.add_route('edit_page', '/{pagename}/edit_page')
    config.scan()
    return config.make_wsgi_app()

The highlighted lines are the ones that need to be added or edited.

Viewing the application in a browser

We can finally examine our application in a browser (See Start the application). Launch a browser and visit each of the following URLs, checking that the result is as expected: