Introduction to actors

Tables and choicelists have certain things in common. When we refer to them in general, then we call them actors.

An alternative name for "Actor" might have been "Resource" or "View", but these words are already being used very often, so in Lino we called them actors.

An actor is a globally known unique object that offers actions. Almost every incoming web request in a Lino application requests execution of a given action on a given actor.

The most common type of actors are tables. But not all actors are tables. Another type of actors are frames which display some data in some other form. One such frame actor is the calendar panel, another one is lino.utils.report.EmptyTable, used to display reports.

A tested document

This is a tested document. The following instructions are used for initialization:

The code snippets on this page use the lino_book.projects.team demo project.

>>> from lino import startup
>>> startup('lino_book.projects.team.settings.doctests')
>>> from lino.api.doctest import *

Identifying actors

Actors are identified by their app_label.ClassName, similar to Django's models.

When we say that actors are "globally known unique objects", then we refer to rt.models

Actors are never instantiated, we use only the class objects. This leads to more natural application code. For example you can either import them or use rt.models.

>>> from lino_xl.lib.working.ui import WorkedHours
>>> rt.models.working.WorkedHours is WorkedHours
True

>>> str(WorkedHours)
'working.WorkedHours'

>>> repr(WorkedHours)
'lino_xl.lib.working.ui.WorkedHours'

Getting a list of all actors

When Lino starts up, it automatically discovers the installed plugins and registers each subclass of Actor as an actor.

>>> len(actors.actors_list)
259

The actors aren't collected only in this global list but also at different places depending on their type.

Database tables are subdivided into "master tables", "slave tables" and "generic slave tables":

>>> from lino.core import kernel
>>> len(kernel.master_tables)
121
>>> kernel.master_tables[0]
lino.modlib.system.models.SiteConfigs

>>> len(kernel.slave_tables)
55
>>> kernel.slave_tables[0]
lino_xl.lib.countries.models.PlacesByPlace

>>> list(sorted(kernel.generic_slaves.values(), key=str))
[lino_xl.lib.cal.ui.EntriesByController, lino_xl.lib.cal.ui.TasksByController, lino.modlib.changes.models.ChangesByMaster, lino.modlib.changes.models.ChangesByObject, lino.modlib.checkdata.models.ProblemsByOwner, lino.modlib.comments.ui.CommentsByRFC, lino.modlib.comments.ui.MentionsByOwner, lino_xl.lib.excerpts.models.ExcerptsByOwner, lino.modlib.gfks.models.HelpTextsByModel, lino.modlib.uploads.models.UploadsByController]

>>> for a in kernel.generic_slaves.values():
...    assert a not in kernel.slave_tables
...    assert a in actors.actors_list

Another category are virtual tables

>>> kernel.virtual_tables  
[lino.modlib.about.models.SiteSearch, lino.modlib.gfks.models.BrokenGFKs,
lino.modlib.gfks.models.BrokenGFKsByModel, lino_xl.lib.calview.ui.MonthlySlave,
lino_xl.lib.calview.ui.DailyView, lino_xl.lib.calview.ui.WeeklyView,
lino_xl.lib.calview.ui.MonthlyView, lino_xl.lib.working.ui.WorkedHours,
lino.modlib.users.desktop.UserRoles]

Another category are choicelists

>>> len(kernel.CHOICELISTS)
37
>>> list(sorted(kernel.CHOICELISTS.items()))[6]
('cal.GuestStates', lino_xl.lib.cal.choicelists.GuestStates)

>>> for a in kernel.CHOICELISTS.values():
...    if a not in actors.actors_list:
...        print(a)

And a last category are what we call "frames":

>>> kernel.frames_list
[lino.modlib.about.models.About]

To instantiate or not to instantiate?

While this design choice of never instantiating actors has advantages, it also has some disadvantages:

• Every method of an actor must have a @classmethod decorator. That's a bit surprising for newbies.

• Concepts like lino.core.utils.Parametrizable are common to actions and actors, but need a "class method" and an "instance method" version of their logic.

Here is an example:

from __future__ import print_function
from builtins import object
class Parametrizable(object):
    parameters = None

    @classmethod
    def show(cls):
        print("This is {0} with parameters = {1}".format(cls, cls.parameters))


class Table(Parametrizable):
    pass

class Journals(Table):
    parameters = dict(foo=1, bar=2)


class AnotherTable(Table):
    pass


class MyJournals(Journals, AnotherTable):
    pass


class Action(Parametrizable):
    pass


# actors are never instantiated, actions are. Both inherit from
# Parametrizable

MyJournals.show()
Action().show()

The output will be:

This is <class '__main__.MyJournals'> with parameters = {'foo': 1, 'bar': 2}
This is <class '__main__.Action'> with parameters = None

We might decide one day that Lino creates an automatic singleton instance for each Actor at startup.

Showing, hiding and formatting sums

Lino automatically assumes that you want a sum for every numeric field. Sometimes this is now waht you want. In that case you can say:

MyModel.set_widget_option('year", show_sum=False)

When a table has at least one column with a sum, Lino adds a "totals" line when printing the table. The first empty column in that line will receive a text "Total (9 rows)". That text is customizable by overriding Actor.get_sum_text().

If you don't want that text to appear in the first empty column, you can specify a value for Actor.sum_text_column. Usage example: the first screenshot below is without sum_text_column, the second is with sum_text_column set to 2: