Hi GAE web2py users, I ran into an issue today where i need to have atomic inserts into a GAE table. in a normal database you can do a read/write lock and check if a row exists before you insert, and/or put unique constraints on columns to make this happen. in GAE you can't.
the right answer on how to do this is here: http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/datastore/modelclass.html#Model_get_or_insert and it assumes that you can generate a string key that would be predictable on multiple insert attempts. (in my case i can) now, i'd love to be able to use that with web2py, but web2py expects that all IDs are integers. i think that a way to enhance DAL to work with this might be to: - use GAE reference properties for reference fields: http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/datastore/typesandpropertyclasses.html#ReferenceProperty - allow user to set the GAE named key when they want to, otherwise let DAL and GAE assign an int ID - come up with a way (inside or outside of DAL) that allows us to use the get_or_insert() method of GAE models when desired. before i dig into trying to create a patch for review, are there thoughts, concerns, gotchas, or other things i should think about? thanks much for your time! christian
