Version objects
***************


Operation types
===============

When changing entities and committing results into database Continuum
saves the used operations (INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE) into version
entities. The operation types are stored by default to a small integer
field named 'operation_type'. Class called 'Operation' holds
convenient constants for these values as shown below:

   from sqlalchemy_continuum import Operation

   article = Article(name=u'Some article')
   session.add(article)
   session.commit()

   article.versions[0].operation_type == Operation.INSERT

   article.name = u'Some updated article'
   session.commit()
   article.versions[1].operation_type == Operation.UPDATE

   session.delete(article)
   session.commit()
   article.versions[2].operation_type == Operation.DELETE


Version traversal
=================

   first_version = article.versions[0]
   first_version.index
   # 0


   second_version = first_version.next
   assert second_version == article.versions[1]

   second_version.previous == first_version
   # True

   second_version.index
   # 1


Changeset
=========

Continuum provides easy way for getting the changeset of given version
object. Each version contains a changeset property which holds a dict
of changed fields in that version.

   article = Article(name=u'New article', content=u'Some content')
   session.add(article)
   session.commit(article)

   version = article.versions[0]
   version.changeset
   # {
   #   'id': [None, 1],
   #   'name': [None, u'New article'],
   #   'content': [None, u'Some content']
   # }
   article.name = u'Updated article'
   session.commit()

   version = article.versions[1]
   version.changeset
   # {
   #   'name': [u'New article', u'Updated article'],
   # }

   session.delete(article)
   version = article.versions[1]
   version.changeset
   # {
   #   'id': [1, None]
   #   'name': [u'Updated article', None],
   #   'content': [u'Some content', None]
   # }

SQLAlchemy-Continuum also provides a utility function called
changeset. With this function you can easily check the changeset of
given object in current transaction.

   from sqlalchemy_continuum import changeset


   article = Article(name=u'Some article')
   changeset(article)
   # {'name': [None, u'Some article']}


Version relationships
=====================

Each version object reflects all parent object relationships. You can
think version object relations as 'relations of parent object in given
point in time'.

Lets say you have two models: Article and Category. Each Article has
one Category. In the following example we first add article and
category objects into database.

Continuum saves new ArticleVersion and CategoryVersion records in the
background. After that we update the created article entity to use
another category. Continuum creates new version objects accordingly.

Lastly we check the category relations of different article versions.

   category = Category(name=u'Some category')
   article = Article(
       name=u'Some article',
       category=category
   )
   session.add(article)
   session.commit()

   article.category = Category(name=u'Some other category')
   session.commit()


   article.versions[0].category.name  # u'Some category'
   article.versions[1].category.name  # u'Some other category'

The logic how SQLAlchemy-Continuum builds these relationships is
within the RelationshipBuilder class.


Relationships to non-versioned classes
--------------------------------------

Let's take previous example of Articles and Categories. Now consider
that only Article model is versioned:

   class Article(Base):
       __tablename__ = 'article'
       __versioned__ = {}

       id = sa.Column(sa.Integer, autoincrement=True, primary_key=True)
       name = sa.Column(sa.Unicode(255), nullable=False)


   class Category(Base):
       __tablename__ = 'tag'

       id = sa.Column(sa.Integer, autoincrement=True, primary_key=True)
       name = sa.Column(sa.Unicode(255))
       article_id = sa.Column(sa.Integer, sa.ForeignKey(Article.id))
       article = sa.orm.relationship(
           Article,
           backref=sa.orm.backref('categories')
       )

Here Article versions will still reflect the relationships of Article
model but they will simply return Category objects instead of
CategoryVersion objects:

   category = Category(name=u'Some category')
   article = Article(
       name=u'Some article',
       category=category
   )
   session.add(article)
   session.commit()

   article.category = Category(name=u'Some other category')
   session.commit()

   version = article.versions[0]
   version.category.name                   # u'Some other category'
   isinstance(version.category, Category)  # True


Dynamic relationships
---------------------

If the parent class has a dynamic relationship it will be reflected as
a property which returns a query in the associated version class.

   class Article(Base):
       __tablename__ = 'article'
       __versioned__ = {}

       id = sa.Column(sa.Integer, autoincrement=True, primary_key=True)
       name = sa.Column(sa.Unicode(255), nullable=False)


   class Tag(Base):
       __tablename__ = 'tag'
       __versioned__ = {}

       id = sa.Column(sa.Integer, autoincrement=True, primary_key=True)
       name = sa.Column(sa.Unicode(255))
       article_id = sa.Column(sa.Integer, sa.ForeignKey(Article.id))
       article = sa.orm.relationship(
           Article,
           backref=sa.orm.backref(
               'tags',
               lazy='dynamic'
           )
       )

   article = Article()
   article.name = u'Some article'
   article.content = u'Some content'
   session.add(article)
   session.commit()

   tag_query = article.versions[0].tags
   tag_query.all()  # return all tags for given version

   tag_query.count()  # return the tag count for given version
