Similar Projects

Below is a list of projects that share one or more major goals with Monk.

The descriptions may be a bit too critical, but that’s only because of the inevitable competition between Monk and these projects; Monk aims to be better and the list shows how it is better. I mean, what’s the point of creating a project if not to make a solution that would incorporate the strong points and address the weaknesses of its predecessors? Oh well.

Note

Spotted an error?

Please excuse me for possible false assumptions about the projects being described; if you find an error, please don’t hesitate to poke me via e-mail or the issue tracker (as this would be a proper documentation issue).

Schema Definition

Monk
See monk.schema.
MongoKit

Simple and pythonic, very similar to Monk (actually, Monk’s “natural” DSL was inspired by that of MongoKit). However, everything is tightly bound to MongoDB (not to mention the lacking possibility to work with plain data without ODMs); the required flag, default values and custom validators are defined on the root level, duplicating the structure in each case.

MongoKit example:

class Spec(Document):
    structure = {
        'foo': int,
        'bar': str,
        'baz': {
            'quux': str
        }
    }
    default_values = {
        'foo': 5,
        'quux': 'flux'
    }
    required = ['foo', 'baz.quux']

Spec(**data).validate()

Semantically equivalent schema in Monk (without classes):

spec = {
    'foo': 5,
    'bar': nullable(str),
    'baz': {
        'quux': 'flux'
    }
}

validate(spec, data)

Very similar support (and notation) for nested lists and dicts; also supports nested tuples.

MongoEngine

Very verbose Django-like syntax, traditional for ORMs.

MongoEngine example:

class User(Document):
    name = StringField(required=True)

class Comment(EmbeddedDocument):
    author = ReferenceField(User, required=True)
    content = StringField(required=True, max_length=30)
    added = DateTimeField(required=True, default=datetime.datetime.utcnow)

class Post(Document):
    title = StringField(required=True)
    author = ReferenceField(User)
    tags = ListField(StringField())
    comments = ListField(EmbeddedDocumentField(Comment))

Semantically equivalent schema in Monk (without classes):

user_schema = {'name': str}

comment_schema = {
    'author': ObjectId,   # see monk.modeling; still needs work
    'content': IsA(str) & Length(max=30),
    'added': datetime.datetime.utcnow,
}

post_schema = {
    'title': str,
    'author': ObjectId,
    'tag': [ optional(str) ],
    'comments': [ optional(comment_schema) ]
}

The FooField layer can be added on top of the normal Monk syntax if needed.

MongoEngine is tightly bound to MongoDB and provides many database-specific features which are not present in Monk (e.g. defining deletion policy of referred documents).

Colander

Declarative and imperative schema declaration (for “static” and dynamically generated data models). Very verbose, class-based. Similar to traditional ORMs but more flexible and generalized: there are tuple/mapping/sequence schemata with nested “schema nodes” and/or other schemata. Supports inheritance.

Colander example (from tutorial):

import colander

class Friend(colander.TupleSchema):
    rank = colander.SchemaNode(colander.Int(),
                               validator=colander.Range(0, 9999))
    name = colander.SchemaNode(colander.String())

class Phone(colander.MappingSchema):
    location = colander.SchemaNode(colander.String(),
                                   validator=colander.OneOf(['home', 'work']))
    number = colander.SchemaNode(colander.String())

class Friends(colander.SequenceSchema):
    friend = Friend()

class Phones(colander.SequenceSchema):
    phone = Phone()

class Person(colander.MappingSchema):
    name = colander.SchemaNode(colander.String())
    age = colander.SchemaNode(colander.Int(),
                              validator=colander.Range(0, 200))
    friends = Friends()
    phones = Phones()

Semantically equivalent schema in Monk (without classes):

from monk import Rule
from monk import validators

friend_schema = {
    'rank': IsA(int) & InRange(0, 9999),
    'name': str
}
phone_schema = {
    'location': IsA(str) & one_of(['home', 'work']),
    'number': str,
}
person_schema = {
    'name': str,
    'age': IsA(int) & InRange(0, 200),
    'friends': [ friend_schema ],
    'phones': [ phone_schema ],
}

Note

Tuples

Monk does not support fixed-size tuples with named arguments out of the box. However, it’s easy to write a validator for this specific use case.

Validation

Monk
See monk.validators.
MongoKit

Type validation (extensible with custom types). All validators beyond types belong in a separate dictionary which mostly duplicates the schema dictionary. The list of required fields (with names in a MongoDB-ish dot notation, i.e. foo.$unicode.bar) must be defined in yet another place. This approach implies noticeable redundancy for relatively complex documents.

The Document class also has an overloadable validate() method which makes sense for simultaneous multi-field validation. In Monk you would simply call the normal and a custom validation functions one after another (or overload the method in a similar way if using modeling).

MongoEngine
Validation is integrated into FooField classes and triggered on save. Only very basic validators (required, unique, choices) are tunable. Custom validation implies custom field classes. For each field. Ouch.
Colander

A SchemaNode instance validates a value by a) the SchemaType bound to its class, and b) by an optional validator passed to the constructor (a selection of common validators is bundled in the colander module).

It takes time to even grasp the terminology, not to mention the code (which is very clean and well-documented but presented as a 2K+ LOC module that handles all flavours of schema declaration + validation + serialization).

Manipulation

Monk
See monk.manipulation.
MongoKit

Data manipulation mostly embraces conversion between Python types and MongoDB internal representation (via PyMongo). This can be tuned with “Custom Types” that handle both manipulation and validation.

It is unknown whether the list of default values supports callables.

MongoEngine

Mostly embraces conversion between Python types and MongoDB. This is always implemented by FooField classes that handle both manipulation and validation.

Supports callable defaults.

Colander

Focused on (de)serialization (which is closer to normalization):

>>> class MySchema(colander.MappingSchema):
...     age = colander.SchemaNode(colander.Int())
...
>>> schema = MySchema()
>>> schema.deserialize({'age': '20'})
{'age': 20}

Supports optional preparer functions per node to prepare deserialized data for validation (e.g. strip whitespace, etc.).

In general, this functionality is very useful (and not bound to a concrete storage backend). Not sure if Monk should embrace it, though.

SchemaNode also contains utility functions to manipulate an appstruct or a cstruct:

  • (un)flattening a data structure:

    >>> schema.flatten({'a': [{'b': 123}]})
    {'a.0.b': 123}
    
  • accessing and mutating nodes in a data structure:

    rank = schema.get_value(appstruct, 'friends.2.rank')
    schema.set_value(appstruct, 'friends.2.rank', rank + 5000)
    

    (which resembles the MongoDB document updating API)

Modeling

Monk

See monk.modeling.

lightweight schema:
 

Yes. The schema is not bound to any kind of storage or form. It can be — just add another layer on top.

reusable parts:

Yes. The Document class can be used right away, subclassed or be built anew from the components that were designed to be reusable.

This makes Monk a good building block for custom ODMs.

dot-expanded dictionary behaviour:
 

Yes.

polymorphism (document inheritance):
 

Not yet.

MongoKit
lightweight schema:
 No. The Document class is bound to a MongoDB collection.
reusable parts:No. The underlying functions are not intended to be used separately.
dot-expanded dictionary behaviour:
 Yes.
polymorphism (document inheritance):
 Yes.
MongoEngine
lightweight schema:
 No. The Document class is bound to a MongoDB collection.
reusable parts:No. The underlying functions are not intended to be used separately.
dot-expanded object behaviour:
 Yes.
polymorphism (document inheritance):
 Yes.
Colander
No modeling as such.

MongoDB extension

Monk
See monk.mongo.
MongoKit
Tightly bound to MongoDB on all levels. The document class is bound to a collection (which I found problematic in the past but generally this may be good design). Very good integration. PyMongo is accessible when needed (like in Monk). Keeps the data clean from tool-specific metadata (like Monk). In general, MongoDB support is superior compared to that of Monk but both use PyMongo so the basic functionality is exactly the same. The choice depends on given project’s use cases.
MongoEngine
Seems to be on par with MongoKit.