Portable classes: how to set a property in a server method

Anvil Q&A
1

What I’m trying to do:
Set a property on a portable class using a server method

What I’ve tried and what’s not working:
server methods that manipulate self don’t seem to do anything when called from client.

I have to return something from the server method and then set that property from outside of the method.

2

to get the portable class to sync across server/client
you will need to use the capability update mechanism
this is how anvil table rows work

see this example from the docs

Note this means you will probably want to create the object on the server
since you can’t create a capability on the client

Minimal Example

import anvil.server
from uuid import uuid4


@anvil.server.portable_class
class Person:
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name = name
        self.id = str(uuid4())
        self.cap = anvil.server.Capability(["Person", self.id])

        self.cap.set_update_handler(self._handle_cache_update)

    def __deserialize__(self, data, global_data):
        self.__dict__.update(data)
        self.cap.set_update_handler(self._handle_cache_update)

    @anvil.server.server_method
    def set_name(self, name):
        print(name)
        self.name = name
        self.cap.send_update({"name": name})

    def _handle_cache_update(self, update):
        if "name" in update:
            self.name = update["name"]