File this under "stupid but useful web2py tricks".... I have a database that I need to populate from an ASCII text file. I've been tearing my hair out parsing the file and doing all the formatting by hand for every field, and then inserting the data into the table. What a joy to find "validate_and_insert" which runs the data through the Field validators first before inserting the data.
My date fields, for instance, are written in the text file in compressed form, like "MMDDYYYY" with no delimiters. I just set the validator on that Field first to IS_DATE(format="%m%d%Y") and it takes care of the conversion automatically. This is a real timesaver! I did notice that I need to null out some of the fancier validators that use more than one field on table updates that don't include all the needed fields. Caveat emptor. I dunno if it is marginally faster or slower than me doing it by hand, but I can tell you its a whole lot more maintainable, and that is the real winner long term. -- Joe -- Resources: - http://web2py.com - http://web2py.com/book (Documentation) - http://github.com/web2py/web2py (Source code) - https://code.google.com/p/web2py/issues/list (Report Issues) --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "web2py-users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
