Navigating Search Type Hierarchy

Hierarchies

Each project in TACTIC contains a collection of search types. The schema defines how these search types are related to each other. There is a wide variety of possible ways that two search types can be related to each other. The schema abstracts these relationships so that it is easy to navigate through these hierarchies.

The following relationship types are used:

  • parent_code: The column named "parent_code" is used to define the parent code. You would need to look at the schema definition to know the exact search_type of each parent. This relationship type has the advantage that it standardizes the name of the parent column.

  • sobject_code: A naming convention of <parent_table>_code is used to define the parent code. SObjects reference each other through the "code" column, which is guaranteed to be unique. (The code column is used instead of "id" because it is easier to read.) This is a more intuitive relationship type than "parent_code".

  • search_type: The parent code is defined by an arbitrary relationship using two columns: search_type and search_id. Together, they uniquely identify parent SObjects.

  • search_key: The parent code is defined by a single column called "search_key," which contains a unique identifier for the parent.

Of the above types, sobject_code and search_type are used most often. Any of these types can be used at any time and be related to each other. Having an intimate knowledge of these relationships can be confusing, so to keep things organized a project schema is used to define which search_types can be related to other search_types and in which ways. In other words, TACTIC uses the schema definition for the project to abstract relationships and make them easier to understand.

Methods

get_parent()

There are a number of methods to help navigate through the search type hierarchy.

Every search type can have a single parent type. You can query this type with get_parent_type(). For example, to find the parent type of a "prod/asset":

search_type = "prod/asset"
parent_type = server.get_parent_type(search_type)
print parent_type

When executed, the above code snippet would return the string "prod/asset_library".

get_child_types()

When the parent/child relationship is search_type or search_key, each SObject will have its own parent. In this case, the parent would return "*", which indicates that all search types are a possible parent.

To find child types, use the get_child_types() function. This function returns a list because a search_type can and will have a number of search types as children. This method will return all of the possible search types.

get_parent()

Most search_types will only have one parent type (except those that defer the parentage to the SObject itself). The get_parent() method allows you to obtain the individual parent SObject of an SObject.

search_type = "prod/asset"
code = "vehicle011"
search_key = server.build_search_key(search_type, code)
parent = server.get_parent(search_key)
print parent.get('code')

Executing the above code snippet would result in the output:

vehicles

because the parent type of "prod/asset" is "prod/asset_library" and the parent of "vehicle011" is the asset library "vehicles"

get_all_children()

Search types can and will have a number of child types. Some types defer the parentage to the SObject itself to determine the parent type. So when searching for children of parents, it is necessary to pass in a child type to narrow down the search. The options for child types can be found by the method get_child_types().

search_type = "prod/asset_library"
code = "vehicles"
search_key = server.build_search_key(search_type, code)
child_type = "prod/asset"
children = server.get_all_children(search_key, child_type)
for child in children:
    print child.get('code')

This code snippet will print out all of the codes of the children of this particular asset library, namely all of the assets in the asset library "vehicles."

get_all_children() can also be used to get snapshots (sthpw/snapshot) or tasks (sthpw/task) as well. These are special child types that defer the parent type to the individual SObjects.

search_type = 'prod/asset'
code = 'vehicle011'
search_key = seaver.build_search_key(search_type, code)
child_type = 'sthpw/task'
tasks = server.get_all_children(search_key, child_type)

This code snippet will obtain all of the tasks associated with vehicle011.