Correct way to get Part model data from UI Context

[jlitewski]

Probably asked to death, but I couldn't find anything, so it'll be asked again:

I'm working on trying to make a plugin that'll make disassembly of a part into it's sub-parts possible. For my usecase, I get bulk boxes in of stuff (plush, rubber ducks, stickers, etc) that can be broken down into smaller quantities of the stuff that gets put into the external inventories of our customers (usually one box of something goes to multiple customers, so being able to break it down would help loads).

Now, my idea is to use the built in BOM system to know what the main part can be broken down into. Based on the documentation, I can get all that with the database model, same goes with the Part itself.

I just can't figure out how to do that. The sample code generated by the plugin creator uses the UI context to figure out if it's on the part page, but it seems like it only gives out the target_model and id, which seems to be the API endpoint ID.

Would I need to use the API to query for the part information? Is there no way to use the id value given to me to query the database itself? Is that even the right way to do things?

I'm not new when it comes to programming (got nearly 2 decades of Java with a few years of C/C++ under my belt), but this is my first rodeo with django.

Thank you for any help, and I'm bound to ask even more dumb questions.

[SchrodingersGat]

Any code that runs in the UI (javascript) does not have direct database access. It needs to access the database via the API.

So you can either:

• Structure your code to use existing API calls to query the database
• Create a custom API endpoint which provides exactly the data you need in a single query
• Run your code in the backend (python) and simply expose the data directly to the UI plugin via the "plugin context" data

[jlitewski]

That's the problem, I'm having a hard time figuring out how to do that.

My thought process is:

1. Only run the code on the part pages (which is done by the example)
2. Get the part information based on what the UI Context gives me
3. Figure out if the part can be assembled, and continue from there
4. Gather the BOM items and pass it through the Context that goes to the custom page

I'm just not entirely sure how to get the part information via the id the UI Context provides me, or if there is a different way to do so. I did find part.api, but I can't find much of anything in the codebase about how it works.

All I really need is to figure out what to give the id value to so it'll give me an object of the part the UI is currently rendering. Part.objects.filter(pk=context.get(`id`)).get() returns nothing, and dumping the list to the console gives the name and description of every part in the database, so that's probably the wrong way to go about it. Looking at the Part Model didn't give me an immediate "ah-ha!" moment to what the context id value would be queried against to get the part I'm looking at.

[SchrodingersGat]

Part.objects.filter(pk=context.get(id)).get() returns nothing

There is no id in the context object - you should inspect the contents of that dict.

If you look at the actual API request being sent (by the web client) to fill out the panels, you see this:

/api/plugins/ui/features/panel/?target_model=part&target_id=557

So, you can run:

part = Part.objects.filter(pk=context.get('target_id'))