Refer to Data Table with square brackets notation in Uplink

Feature Requests
1

Hi! Just starting to play around with Anvil. Finding it great so far!

From the documentation on interacting with Data Tables from Anvil Uplink, I noticed that the only means of refering to a table in the Data Table service is with the dot notation for object attributes:

from anvil.table import app_tables

app_tables.my_table.add_row(Foo='Bar')

It would be nicer if the same could be done using the dictionary-like square brackets notation, allowing greater flexibility to dynamically reference tables:

import anvil.server
from anvil.table import app_tables

my_dict1 = {'foo': 'bar'}
my_dict2 = {'fizz': 'buzz'}

def reusable_loader(table: str, things_to_add: dict):
    # do stuff, prepare export etc.
    app_tables[table].add_row(**things_to_add)  # doesn't work
    print('Done!')

anvil.server.connect('MY_TOKEN')
reusable_loader('foobar', my_dict1)
reusable_loader('fizzbuzz', my_dict2)

Playing with some introspection, I found the following (ugly) workaround:

# import app_tables, anvil.server, connect to app, etc.
import introspect
introspect.getmembers(app_table.cache)  # must be called first, don't know why
app_tables.cache['my_table'].add_row(Foo='Bar')

While that does work, I still find the app_tables['my_table'] notation would be cleaner and more intuitive.

2

Hi @bc.bernardo and welcome to the forum,

app_tables has a get method for just this kind of thing.
**(edit - this used to be a thing but was not public either and is no longer available)

app_tables.get('my_table')

I would also avoided using the cache since it’s not part of the public api as far as I’m aware.

You could use getattr(app_tables, 'my_table', None)

1 Like
3

Cool! I’ll try that.

Thanks for the fast response.

4

Interesting, @stucork. Where is that documented?

5

@joinlook - I take it back - it must have been a similar piece of interface that was not part of the public api that I’d found through introspection.

Rechecking it’s not available anymore (or never was and I imagined it)

Which is a good lesson - if it’s not documented then don’t rely on it :man_facepalming: !

getattr(app_tables, 'my_table', None)

Will work because it’s generic python and app_tables is a python object.
This would be the workaround for using table names as strings

1 Like