Getting started¶

Installation¶

$ pip install cliquet

More details about installation and storage backend is provided in a dedicated section.

Start a Pyramid project¶

As detailed in Pyramid documentation, create a minimal application, or use its scaffolding tool:

$ pcreate -s starter MyProject

Include Cliquet¶

In the application main file (e.g. MyProject/myproject/__init__.py), just add some extra initialization code:

import pkg_resources

import cliquet
from pyramid.config import Configurator

# Module version, as defined in PEP-0396.
__version__ = pkg_resources.get_distribution(__package__).version


def main(global_config, **settings):
    config = Configurator(settings=settings)

    cliquet.initialize(config, __version__)
    return config.make_wsgi_app()

By doing that, basic features like authentication, monitoring, error formatting, deprecation indicators are now available, and rely on configuration present in development.ini.

Run!¶

With some backends, like PostgreSQL, some tables and indices have to be created. A generic command is provided to accomplish this:

$ cliquet --ini development.ini migrate

Like any Pyramid application, it can be served locally with:

$ pserve development.ini --reload

A hello view is now available at http://localhost:6543/v0/ (As well as basic endpoints like the utilities).

The next steps will consist in building a custom application using Cornice or the Pyramid ecosystem.

But most likely, it will consist in defining REST resources using Cliquet python API !

Authentication¶

Currently, if no authentication is set in settings, Cliquet relies on Basic Auth. It will associate a unique user id for every user/password combination.

Using HTTPie, it is as easy as:

$ http -v http://localhost:6543/v0/ --auth user:pass

Note

In the case of Basic Auth, there is no need of registering a user/password. Pick any combination, and include them in each request.

Define resources¶

In order to define a resource, inherit from cliquet.resource.UserResource, in a subclass, in myproject/views.py for example:

from cliquet import resource

@resource.register()
class Mushroom(resource.UserResource):
    # No schema yet.
    pass

In application initialization, make Pyramid aware of it:

def main(global_config, **settings):
    config = Configurator(settings=settings)

    cliquet.initialize(config, __version__)
    config.scan("myproject.views")
    return config.make_wsgi_app()

In order to bypass the installation and configuration of Redis or PostgreSQL, specify the «in-memory» backends in development.ini:

# development.ini
cliquet.cache_backend = cliquet.cache.memory
cliquet.storage_backend = cliquet.storage.memory
cliquet.permission_backend = cliquet.permission.memory

A Mushroom resource API is now available at the /mushrooms/ URL.

It will accept a bunch of REST operations, as defined in the API section.

Warning

Without schema, a resource will not store any field at all!

The next step consists in attaching a schema to the resource, to control what fields are accepted and stored.

Schema validation¶

It is possible to validate records against a predefined schema, associated to the resource.

Currently, only Colander is supported, and it looks like this:

import colander
from cliquet import resource


class MushroomSchema(resource.ResourceSchema):
    name = colander.SchemaNode(colander.String())


@resource.register()
class Mushroom(resource.UserResource):
    mapping = MushroomSchema()

What’s next ?¶

Configuration¶

See Configuration to customize the application settings, such as authentication, storage or cache backends.

Resource customization¶

See the resource documentation to specify custom URLs, schemaless resources, read-only fields, unicity constraints, record pre-processing...

Advanced initialization¶

cliquet.initialize(config, version=None, project_name='', default_settings=None)¶

Initialize Cliquet with the given configuration, version and project name.

This will basically include cliquet in Pyramid and set route prefix based on the specified version.

Parameters:	config (Configurator) – Pyramid configuration version (str) – Current project version (e.g. ‘0.0.1’) if not defined in application settings. project_name (str) – Project name if not defined in application settings. default_settings (dict) – Override cliquet default settings values.

Beyond Cliquet¶

Cliquet is just a component! The application can still be built and extended using the full Pyramid ecosystem.

See the dedicated section for examples of Cliquet extensions.