Models

Models for your whirlwind application should be placed in application/models. By default, whirlwind stores data persistently in mongodb, a no-sql database. Mongodb is accessed via MongoKit. Whirlwind's model structuring is highly dependent on MongoKit, a python module that "brings structured schema and validation layer on top of the great pymongo driver".

Check out the MongoKit documentation here.

Creating a new Model

To create a new model, we advise you create a new file in application/models that's named after the model you wish to create. For example, to create a User model, create a new file user.py. The first thing you should do is import the necessary modules:

## Necessary modules
from mongokit import *
from whirlwind.db.mongo import Mongo
from tornado import options                                                       

# others I might use
import datetime                                                              
import hashlib, hmac, base64, re

Then define a Model that should be a subclass of the Document MongoKit class. But before declaring the Model class, always register the Model:

class User(Document):                                                        
   structure = {                                                            
                '_id':unicode,                                              
                'email':unicode,                                            
                'roles':list,                                               
                'password':unicode,                                         
                'created_at':datetime.datetime,                             
                'history' : {                                               
                            'last_login' : datetime.datetime,              
                            'num_logins' : long                            
                             },                                             
                'timezone':unicode,                                         
                'suspended_at':datetime.datetime,                           
                }                                                           
   use_dot_notation=True 

Check out the documentation on the Mongokit Document class here.

Interacting with the Model

• Db transactions?
• How does the DB transactions hapen
• How do you save stuff in the model?