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Add an `object_type` attribute to model classes
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Description

With the current move to using swh.model objects as much as possible, we no longer need to also pass the object type as argument. See eg. the JournalWriter.write_additions() for example:

def write_additions(self, obj_type, values) -> None:

in which values is expected to be an iterable of model objects of object_type type.

In order to prevent the usage of is_instance everywhere, a simple solution is to add an attribute to swh.model.model classes (typically `.object_type') as Final attributes.

This idea has been proposed in D3152, however, the current implementation is stuck because of the way lazy-loading capable Content are implemented (subclassing the Content model class).

Event Timeline

douardda triaged this task as Normal priority.May 26 2020, 5:03 PM
douardda created this task.

This task is currently blocked by an implementation "detail":

  • the swh.model.model.Content class is subclassed by the swh.model.from_dict.DiskBackedContent to provide a lazy-loading mechanism for Content objects which data is actually a disk file.
  • the proposed diff (D3152) make the assumption a model class with the object_type attribute should not be subclassed to prevent having to deal with a poor-man's parallel type system (so the test test_object_type_is_final provided in this diff, however this later currently fails because of the presence of swh.model.from_dict.DiskBackedContent.

A short-term solution is to release this must-be-final property and add an object_type attribute to from_dict.DiskBackedContent with a value like "content-file" or something.

But a closer look at the code shows that this lazyness property of from_dict.Content is currently unused (used to be, but refactoring got rid of it).

So the lazyness property of a model.Content should be rethought.

I propose to do what is described above to make D3152 land, and create a new ticket dedicated to how to properly reimplement this lazy-loading behavior.

Previously proposed "short-term" solution does not work. So the only "short-term" solution is to make DiskBakedContent inherit from BaseModel (or BaseContent).