Django Query by Example (QBE)

synopsis:	Admin tool in order to get custom reports.

The objective of django-qbe is provide a assited and interactive way of making complex queries with no technical knowledge (or minimal) to get custom reports from the objects of Django models.

Based on QBE proposal from IBM®, django-qbe is intended to remove the limitations of Django QuerySets objects and to use the whole expresive power of the subjacent SQL.

Installation

Using the Python Package Index (PyPI) and easy_install script:

$ easy_install django_qbe

Or through pip:

$ pip install django_qbe

But you also can download the django_qbe directory using git:

$ git clone git://github.com/versae/qbe.git
$ cp -r qbe/django_qbe /path/to/your/project

Adding to the project settings:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    # [...] django builtins applications
    'django_qbe',
    # [...] Any other application
)

And adding the urlconf in your project urls.py:

# qbe
url(r'^qbe/', include('django_qbe.urls')),

Add the context processor django.core.context_processors.static:

TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = (
    # [...] django context processors
    'django.core.context_processors.static',
    # [...] Any other context processors
)

See the Django documentation on static files for details.

That's all. Then you can access to http://host:port/qbe However, you can add a link from your admin page changing the admin index template fo your AdminSite:

class AdminSite(admin.AdminSite):
    index_template = "qbe_index.html"

Or adding in your custom admin index template the next javascript:

<script type="text/javascript" src="{% url qbe_js %}"></script>

Saved queries

If you optionally want to store queries in your database, feel free to install the also included app django_qbe.savedqueries:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    # [...] django builtins applications
    'django_qbe',
    'django_qbe.savedqueries',
    # [...] Any other application
)

Then run the syncdb or optionally South's migrate management command to create the savedqueries_saved_query table.

After that there will be a new option to save a query in a model instance and an admin interface to browse the saved queries, or direclty from the command line using the command qbe_export:

$ python manage.py help qbe_export
$ python manage.py qbe_export <query_hash>
$ python manage.py qbe_export <query_hash> --output test.csv
$ python manage.py qbe_export <query_hash> --output test.xls --format xls
$ python manage.py qbe_export <query_hash> --output test.xls --format xls --db-alias default

Settings

The next lines show de available settings and its default values.

Enable autocompletion tool (work in progress, not enabled yet):

QBE_AUTOCOMPLETE = True

Enable an Exhibit faceted navigation for results (not yet implemented):

QBE_EXHIBIT = False

Admin module name to add admin urls in results:

QBE_ADMIN = "admin"

Set your own admin site if it's different to usual django.contrib.admin.site:

QBE_ADMIN_SITE ="admin.admin_site"

Function to control to users with access to QBE:

QBE_ACCESS_FOR = lambda user: user.is_staff

Path to QBE formats export file, in order to add custom export formats:

QBE_FORMATS_EXPORT = "qbe_formats"