DISCUSSION PR: Re-writing Entity to subclass object instead of dict. by dhermes · Pull Request #445 · googleapis/google-cloud-python · GitHub

This fixes #396, but I am happy to close it if there are issues with it. (Hence the DISCUSSION in the description.)

It is a first-step towards the discussion in #336 with @elibixby and @proppy.

The Entity class doesn't attempt to be a dictionary, rather it provides __getitem__ (and set and del) semantics and update_properties and clear_properties methods for updating the properties and leaving the rest of the entity alone.

The long term goal is to provide a way to do something like:

>>> e1 = Entity('SomeKind', 1, prop1=u'foo', prop2=u'bar')
>>> e1
<Entity[{'kind': 'SomeKind', 'id': 1}] {'prop1': u'foo', 'prop2': u'bar'}>
>>> e2 = Entity('SomeKind', 1, {'prop1': u'foo', 'prop2': u'bar'})
>>> e2
<Entity[{'kind': 'SomeKind', 'id': 1}] {'prop1': u'foo', 'prop2': u'bar'}>
>>> e1 == e2
True
>>> e_partial = Entity('ParentKind', 1, 'ChildKind', prop=True)
>>> e_partial
<Entity[{'kind': 'Parent', 'id': 1}, {'kind': 'Child'}] {'prop': True}>

and I think to get there this is necessary to separate the property data (as _data) from the other metadata.

I am still trying to figure out a way to squeeze in "special" keyword arguments like

key (may be possible to just implement a method like key.to_args() so we don't need a kwarg. Or instead we could check if len(positional_args) == 1 and isinstance(positional_args[0], Key))
dataset (Implicit dataset from environ #444 may make this unnecessary if we take it a bit further and my design doc just says forget about it and set it on the key. Though the ID is still needed if we only have the key parts from positional_args.)
exclude_from_indexes (as a power-user feature, it may not be necessary to put this in the constructor)

but that is outside the scope of this PR / discussion.

Coverage remained the same when pulling c1137f6 on dhermes:do-not-inherit-dict into 21e5f45 on GoogleCloudPlatform:master.

Give the discussion in #446, it seems that syntax should actually be Entity(Key('SomeKind',1), ...) in which case I think Entity(key, props) makes more sense than Entity(key, **props). This also allows for easy addition of other special kwargs (although as per the design doc I think the only necessary one is exclude_from_indexes).

First, let me note that my trailing comments give a context for this PR, but don't actually pertain to the code in the PR.

To address @elibixby remarks:

Yes #444 needs to be implemented for

Entity('Kind', 1, prop1=u'foo')

to have a chance of working.

I think in addition to the constructors I mentioned above we should also enable

>>> key
<Key[{'kind': 'SomeKind', 'id': 1}]>
>>> Entity(key, prop1=u'foo', prop2=u'bar')
<Entity[{'kind': 'SomeKind', 'id': 1}] {'prop1': u'foo', 'prop2': u'bar'}>
>>> Entity(key, {'prop1': u'foo', 'prop2': u'bar'})
<Entity[{'kind': 'SomeKind', 'id': 1}] {'prop1': u'foo', 'prop2': u'bar'}>

This will allow for things like keys from multiple datasets in the same application and keys with namespaces.

Is this providing too many ways to achieve the same thing? I do like the idea of being able to instantiate an entity with a path (and providing the key with the "default" dataset from the environment), but I'm not sure if Entity(key, dict(prop1=u'foo', prop2=u'bar')) is much more burdensome than Entity(key, prop1=u'foo', prop2=u'bar'). If both exist, then users must remember to pass a dict rather than kwargs when setting exclude_from_indexes (or any meta-properties that may crop up in the future)

Just a my $.02. I think the ideas have been fantastic so far, and am really excited with all the discussion.

@elibixby You're probably right that we should only accept a key as a positional arg since the syntax would be the same.

RE: exclude_from_indexes I'm fine with

>>> e = Entity(key, prop1=u'foo', prop2=u'bar')
>>> e.remove_prop_from_index('prop1')

A full-blown ORM (like ndb) makes this easier when Propertys are objects:

class Foo(ndb.Model):
    bar = ndb.StringProperty(indexed=False)

Yes! I like that!

Changes Unknown when pulling 0d79df0 on dhermes:do-not-inherit-dict into * on GoogleCloudPlatform:master*.

Coverage remained the same when pulling e43096a on dhermes:do-not-inherit-dict into b343acf on GoogleCloudPlatform:master.

Overall, I don't see any advantage to the "object-with-a-dict" versus "object-derived-from-dict".

@tseaver let's forget about this for now. I initially did it because I didn't want a split MRO on Entity but it won't matter in the long-run since Entity won't need a dataset.

In the interest of "only one way", the note above for me is the best option for a constructor. (First positional arg must be a key, if more than one, second must be a dict. Otherwise, kwargs acts as the dict.)

I'll rebase #456 to forget about this PR and we'll go from there (after wrapping up #444).

Closing PR but leaving the branch alive in my fork so may revisit. It likely won't be necessary as Entity gets stripped down further.

Toward #445.

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* feat: use nullable Int64 and boolean dtypes if available * allow google-cloud-bigquery 3.x * document dtypes mapping

🤖 I have created a release *beep* *boop* --- ## [0.17.0](googleapis/python-bigquery-pandas@v0.16.0...v0.17.0) (2022-01-19) ### ⚠ BREAKING CHANGES * use nullable Int64 and boolean dtypes if available (#445) ### Features * accepts a table ID, which downloads the table without a query ([#443](googleapis/python-bigquery-pandas#443)) ([bf0e863](googleapis/python-bigquery-pandas@bf0e863)) * use nullable Int64 and boolean dtypes if available ([#445](googleapis/python-bigquery-pandas#445)) ([89078f8](googleapis/python-bigquery-pandas@89078f8)) ### Bug Fixes * `read_gbq` supports extreme DATETIME values such as `0001-01-01 00:00:00` ([#444](googleapis/python-bigquery-pandas#444)) ([d120f8f](googleapis/python-bigquery-pandas@d120f8f)) * `to_gbq` allows strings for DATE and floats for NUMERIC with `api_method="load_parquet"` ([#423](googleapis/python-bigquery-pandas#423)) ([2180836](googleapis/python-bigquery-pandas@2180836)) * allow extreme DATE values such as `datetime.date(1, 1, 1)` in `load_gbq` ([#442](googleapis/python-bigquery-pandas#442)) ([e13abaf](googleapis/python-bigquery-pandas@e13abaf)) * avoid iteritems deprecation in pandas prerelease ([#469](googleapis/python-bigquery-pandas#469)) ([7379cdc](googleapis/python-bigquery-pandas@7379cdc)) * use data project for destination in `to_gbq` ([#455](googleapis/python-bigquery-pandas#455)) ([891a00c](googleapis/python-bigquery-pandas@891a00c)) ### Miscellaneous Chores * release 0.17.0 ([#470](googleapis/python-bigquery-pandas#470)) ([29ac8c3](googleapis/python-bigquery-pandas@29ac8c3)) --- This PR was generated with [Release Please](https://github.com/googleapis/release-please). See [documentation](https://github.com/googleapis/release-please#release-please).

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#### Summary `dev_requirements.txt` was recently changed to upgrade the dependency on pytest-flake8 from 1.1.0 to 1.1.1. Unfortunately, pytest-flake8 requires pytest 7 or above, and the current pinned dependency for pytest is 6.2.5. I tried moving up to pytest 7 but it seems like there's a decent amount of work going into that, so in order to fix main, this PR moves the pytest-flake8 pinned version back to 1.1.0. Fixes #445.

* chore(python): use python 3.10 for docs build Source-Link: googleapis/synthtool@9ae0785 Post-Processor: gcr.io/cloud-devrel-public-resources/owlbot-python:latest@sha256:52210e0e0559f5ea8c52be148b33504022e1faef4e95fbe4b32d68022af2fa7e * use python 3.10 for docs build --------- Co-authored-by: Owl Bot <gcf-owl-bot[bot]@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: Anthonios Partheniou <partheniou@google.com>

fixes #227 Co-authored-by: Emmanuel T Odeke <emmanuel@orijtech.com>

This adds python built-in [ConnectionError](https://docs.python.org/3/library/exceptions.html#ConnectionError) to default retryable types. ConnectionError was recently added in the [BigQuery library](googleapis/python-bigquery#571) to allow retries. Fixes #426 🦕

dhermes mentioned this pull request Dec 19, 2014

datastore.Entity should not know about the dataset #446

Closed

dhermes force-pushed the do-not-inherit-dict branch from c1137f6 to 0d79df0 Compare December 19, 2014 20:13

Re-writing Entity to subclass object instead of dict.

e43096a

dhermes force-pushed the do-not-inherit-dict branch from 0d79df0 to e43096a Compare December 20, 2014 01:44

This was referenced Dec 21, 2014

Fix 3 and 451 #454

Closed

Address first part of 451: Remove Key.from_path #456

Merged

tseaver reviewed Dec 23, 2014
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dhermes closed this Dec 23, 2014

dhermes mentioned this pull request Dec 30, 2014

Address sixth part of 451: Implement Key.compare_to_proto to check pb keys against existing. #462

Merged

dhermes deleted the do-not-inherit-dict branch January 7, 2015 03:04

dhermes added the api: datastore Issues related to the Datastore API. label Dec 31, 2015

tseaver added a commit that referenced this pull request Jun 25, 2018

Add blob properties to support retention policy feature. (#446 )

f6048da

Toward #445.

tseaver added a commit that referenced this pull request Jun 25, 2018

Add bucket properties to support retention policy feature. (#447 )

6a1866e

Toward #445.

tseaver added a commit that referenced this pull request Jun 25, 2018

Add 'Bucket.lock_retention_policy' API wrapper. (#448 )

80129f1

Toward #445.

tseaver added a commit that referenced this pull request Aug 28, 2018

Add blob properties to support retention policy feature. (#446 )

cee0807

Toward #445.

tseaver added a commit that referenced this pull request Aug 28, 2018

Add bucket properties to support retention policy feature. (#447 )

bf18051

Toward #445.

tseaver added a commit that referenced this pull request Aug 28, 2018

Add 'Bucket.lock_retention_policy' API wrapper. (#448 )

635e247

Toward #445.

tseaver added a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 7, 2018

Add blob properties to support retention policy feature. (#446 )

c29729e

Toward #445.

tseaver added a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 7, 2018

Add bucket properties to support retention policy feature. (#447 )

3c7054e

Toward #445.

tseaver added a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 7, 2018

Add 'Bucket.lock_retention_policy' API wrapper. (#448 )

2f22ae1

Toward #445.

tseaver added a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 17, 2018

Add blob properties to support retention policy feature. (#446 )

3060050

Toward #445.

tseaver added a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 17, 2018

Add bucket properties to support retention policy feature. (#447 )

b03b6fe

Toward #445.

tseaver added a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 17, 2018

Add 'Bucket.lock_retention_policy' API wrapper. (#448 )

16d7da0

Toward #445.

tseaver added a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 17, 2018

Add blob properties to support retention policy feature. (#446 )

108c557

Toward #445.

tseaver added a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 17, 2018

Add bucket properties to support retention policy feature. (#447 )

b7a1566

Toward #445.

tseaver added a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 17, 2018

Add 'Bucket.lock_retention_policy' API wrapper. (#448 )

8bead37

Toward #445.

parthea pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Jun 4, 2023

chore(main): release 2.8.0 (#445 )

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parthea pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 21, 2023

chore(main): release 2.8.3 (#445 )

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parthea pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Aug 21, 2025

chore(deps): update dependency pytest to v7.1.2 (#445 )

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parthea pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 16, 2025

chore(deps): update dependency pytest to v7.1.2 (#445 )

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parthea pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 18, 2025

feat!: use nullable Int64 and boolean dtypes if available (#445 )

732b4de

* feat: use nullable Int64 and boolean dtypes if available * allow google-cloud-bigquery 3.x * document dtypes mapping

parthea pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Nov 24, 2025

fix: handle repeated fields in method signatures (#445 )

79e5615

Co-authored-by: Dov Shlachter <dovs@google.com>

parthea pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Nov 24, 2025

chore(deps): update dependency pytest to v7.3.2 (#445 )

ff80597

parthea pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Mar 6, 2026

django: remove SchemaEditor.quote_value() TODO (#445 )

05f3fb9

fixes #227 Co-authored-by: Emmanuel T Odeke <emmanuel@orijtech.com>

parthea pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Mar 9, 2026

chore(deps): update dependency nox to v2022.11.21 (#445 )

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DISCUSSION PR: Re-writing Entity to subclass object instead of dict. by dhermes · Pull Request #445 · googleapis/google-cloud-python · GitHub

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