Question

In the following example code I illustrate how I solved passing the request from the controller to the model. Is there a better way to do this?

models/MyModel.py

from google.appengine.ext import db

class MyModel(db.model):
    a = db.StringProperty(required=True)
    b = db.StringProperty(required=True)
    c = db.StringProperty(required=True)

class Update:
    def __init__(self, x)
        self.x = x

    def do_something(self)
        myquery = db.GqlQuery('SELECT * FROM MyModel WHERE a = :1' self.x)
        v = myquery.get()

        if not v:
            somevalue = MyModel(a = self.request.get('a'), # Doesn't work unless
                                b = self.request.get('b'), # the request has been
                                c = self.request.get('c')) # passed
            somevalue.put()

controllers/MyController.py

import webapp2
from models.MyModel import Update

class WebHandler(webapp2.RequestHandler):
    def get(self):
        var_x = "string"
        var_y = "string"
        z = Update(var_x)
        z.request = self.request  # <--- Is there a better way?
        z.do_something()

Edit: (5/30/2012)
I ended up creating a function to pass the request variables to the Model as arguments. I was hoping there was some python magic that would avoid all the repetition but I didn’t find one.

Answer 1

handing over the request to the model means you’re mixing model and controller.

normaly the model shouldn’t even be aware that ther even is a request. geting the parameters from the request is the controller’s job, not the models. if your do_something method has to work with parameters, then it should get them as arguments and return a result (usually an entity).