PolyModel Class

The PolyModel class lets an application define models that support polymorphic queries, in a more flexible way than the standard Model class. A query produced from a PolyModel derived class can have results that are instances of the class or any of its subclasses.

It is defined in google.appengine.ext.ndb.polymodel. The following example shows the flexibility provided by the PolyModel class.

from google.appengine.ext import ndb
from google.appengine.ext.ndb import polymodel

class Contact(polymodel.PolyModel):
  phone_number = ndb.PhoneNumberProperty()
  address = ndb.PostalAddressProperty()

class Person(Contact):
  first_name = ndb.StringProperty()
  last_name = ndb.StringProperty()
  mobile_number = ndb.PhoneNumberProperty()

class Company(Contact):
  name = ndb.StringProperty()
  fax_number = ndb.PhoneNumberProperty()

p = Person(phone_number='1-206-555-9234',
           address='123 First Ave., Seattle, WA, 98101',
           first_name='Alfred',
           last_name='Smith',
           mobile_number='1-206-555-0117')
p.put()

c = Company(phone_number='1-503-555-9123',
            address='P.O. Box 98765, Salem, OR, 97301',
            name='Data Solutions, LLC',
            fax_number='1-503-555-6622')
c.put()

for contact in Contact.query():
  print 'Phone: %s\nAddress: %s\n\n' % (contact.phone_number, contact.address)

Contact.query() returns Person and Company instances; if Contact derived from Model instead of from PolyModel, each class would have a different kind and Contact.query() would not return instances of proper subclasses of Contact.

If you wish to retrieve only Person instances, use Person.query(). You could also use Contact.query(Contact.class_ == 'Person').

In addition to the regular Model methods, PolyModel has some interesting class methods:

• _get_kind(): the name of the root class; e.g. Person._get_kind() == 'Contact'. The root class, Contact in this example, may override this method to use a different name as the kind used in the datastore (for the entire hierarchy rooted here).
• _class_name(): the name of the current class; e.g. Person._class_name() == 'Person'. A leaf class, Person in our example, may override this method to use a different name as the class name and in the class key. A non-leaf class may also override this method, but beware: its subclasses should also override it, or else they will all use the same class name, and you will soon be very confused.
• _class_key(): a list of class names giving the hierarchy. For example, Person._class_key() == ['Contact', 'Person']. For deeper hierarchies, this will include all bases between PolyModel and the current class, including the latter, but excluding PolyModel itself. This is the same as the value of the class_ property. Its datastore name is 'class'.

Since the class name is used in the class_ property and this property is used to distinguish between the subclasses, the class names (as returned by _class_name()) should be unique among those subclasses.