Back
Feb 18, 2010

Business logic in models

In my recent project there was a lot of data business logic, so I had to organize this code somehow. In this article I'll describe a few hints on how to it.

Mixins

Simple business logic functions should in models or managers. When there's a lot of them, the can be split in mixins.

# logic.py
class EventLogic(object):
    def start(self):
        if self.condition():
            # ...


# models.py
class Event(models.Model, EventLogic):
    name = models.CharField()
    # ...

Custom exceptions

For business logic errors you should declare custom exception classes. It's not fun to understand what this specific IntegrityError means.

Generic views

When all logic is in model and can throw, say, BusinessLogicException, we can write views like this:

from django.contrib import messages


def event_action(requets, event_id, action):
    # event = get_object_or_404(...)
    try:
        getattr(event, action)(request.user)
    except BusinessLogicException, e:
        messages.warning(request, e.message)

    return redirect(request.POST.get('next') or event)

Subscribe for the news and updates

More thoughts
Sep 8, 2023Technology
Smooth React virtual scroll with fixed rows/columns

One of our ongoing projects, Neptyne, introduces an Excel-like grid written in React. We used a library to apply virtual scroll to it, but we stumbled upon a problem with fixed rows and columns inside the grid. Here I would like to describe this problem, how it occurs, and how we handled it.

Sep 21, 2020Technology
How to Optimize Django ORM Queries

Django ORM is a very abstract and flexible API. But if you do not know exactly how it works, you will likely end up with slow and heavy views, if you have not already. So, this article provides practical solutions to N+1 and high loading time issues. For clarity, I will create a simple view that demonstrates common ORM query problems and shows frequently used practices.

May 9, 2018Technology
How to Generate PDF Files in Python with Xhtml2pdf, WeasyPrint or Unoconv

Programmatic generation of PDF files is a frequent task when developing applications that can export reports, bills, or questionnaires. In this article, we will consider three common tools for creating PDFs, including their installation and converting principles.

Mar 2, 2017Technology
API versioning with django rest framework?

We often handling API server updates including backwards-incompatible changes when upgrading web applications. At the same time we update the client part, therefore, we did not experience any particular difficulties.

Nov 21, 2016Technology
Crawling FTP server with Scrapy

Welcome all who are reading this article. I was given a task of creating a parser (spider) with the Scrapy library and parsing FTP server with data. The parser had to find lists of files on the server and handle each file separately depending on the requirement to the parser.

Apr 3, 2011Technology
Sprite cache invalidation

When we use css-sprites it's important to make browser cache them for longest period possible. On other hand, we need to refresh them when they are updated. This is especially visible when all icons are stored in single sprite. When it's outdated - entire site becomes ugly.