Quick Table Management Snippet

Just a little snippet that I find myself using again and again, to quickly create navigation to List, update and create tables:

In your controller:

def mylink(field, type, ref):
    """
    Returns a URL to link to in crud.selects.
    """
    return URL(r=request, args=[field])

def table_name():
    """
    Maintain all the table_name records in the application
    Manage, list, create and update projects.
    """
    # SELECT if no args
    if len(request.args)<1:
        return dict(form=crud.select(db.table_name,linkto=mylink))
    # If 1 arg and it is 'create' then CREATE
    elif len(request.args)==1 and request.args[0]=='create':
        return dict(form=crud.create(db.table_name,next=URL(request.application,request.controller,'table_name')))
    # If 1 arg and its integer, EDIT it.
    elif len(request.args)==1:
        try:
            i=int(request.args[0])
        except:
            redirect(URL(r=request,f='index'))
        return dict(form=crud.update(db.table_name,i,next=URL(request.application,request.controller,'table_name')))
    else:
        redirect(URL(r=request,f='index'))

This leaves the following URLs for your table_name actions:

• /appname/controller/table_name will display a SELECT of the table.
• /appname/controller/table_name/create will CREATE a new record for the table.
• /appname/controller/table_name/edit/ID will EDIT table_name.id == ID

Closing up

I really hope that this little snippet saves some of your time for quickly prototyping apps.

Benigno Calvo Adiego, author of the present article, is co-founder of AlbenDas and executive director of the IT division at AlbenDas. Has a 11 year career as system analyst, project manager and IT Director managing external outsourced companies in various industrial and leisure business. Currently uses Web2Py as a quick integration tool to quickly adapt to constant changing requirements.