Glossary¶

ACE¶

An access control entry. An access control entry is one element in an ACL. An access control entry is a three-tuple that describes three things: an action (one of either Allow or Deny), a principal (a string describing a user or group), and a permission. For example the ACE, (Allow, 'bob', 'read') is a member of an ACL that indicates that the principal bob is allowed the permission read against the resource the ACL is attached to.

ACL¶

An access control list. An ACL is a sequence of ACE tuples. An ACL is attached to a resource instance. An example of an ACL is [ (Allow, 'bob', 'read'), (Deny, 'fred', 'write')]. If an ACL is attached to a resource instance, and that resource is findable via the context resource, it will be consulted any active security policy to determine whether a particular request can be fulfilled given the authentication information in the request.

action¶

Represents a pending configuration statement generated by a call to a configuration directive. The set of pending configuration actions are processed when pyramid.config.Configurator.commit() is called.

add-on¶

A Python distribution that uses Pyramid's extensibility to plug into a Pyramid application and provide extra, configurable services.

Agendaless Consulting¶

A consulting organization formed by Paul Everitt, Tres Seaver, and Chris McDonough.

See also

plaster¶

plaster is a library used by Pyramid which acts as an abstraction between command-line scripts and the file format used to load the WSGI components and application settings. By default Pyramid ships with the plaster_pastedeploy library installed which provides integrated support for loading a PasteDeploy INI file.

predicate¶

A test which returns True or False. Two different types of predicates exist in Pyramid: a view predicate and a route predicate. View predicates are attached to view configuration and route predicates are attached to route configuration.

predicate factory¶

A callable which is used by a third party during the registration of a route, view, or subscriber predicates to extend the configuration system. See Adding a Custom View, Route, or Subscriber Predicate for more information.

pregenerator¶

A pregenerator is a function associated by a developer with a route. It is called by route_url() in order to adjust the set of arguments passed to it by the user for special purposes. It will influence the URL returned by route_url(). See pyramid.interfaces.IRoutePregenerator for more information.

principal¶

A principal is a string representing an entity, typically a user or group. Principals are provided by an authentication policy. For example, if a user has the userid bob, and is a member of two groups named group foo and group bar, then the request might have information attached to it indicating that Bob was represented by three principals: bob, group foo and group bar.

project¶

Setuptools / Python packaging terminology. A directory on disk which contains a setup.py and / or pyproject.toml file and one or more Python packages. The project files contain metadata that allow the package(s) to be installed, distributed, and tested.

Pylons¶

A lightweight Python web framework and a predecessor of Pyramid.

PyPI¶

The Python Package Index, a collection of software available for Python.

PyPy¶

PyPy is an "alternative implementation of the Python language": http://pypy.org/

Pyramid Community Cookbook¶

Additional, community-based documentation for Pyramid which presents topical, practical uses of Pyramid: Pyramid Community Cookbook

pyramid_debugtoolbar¶

A Pyramid add-on which displays a helpful debug toolbar "on top of" HTML pages rendered by your application, displaying request, routing, and database information. pyramid_debugtoolbar is configured into the development.ini of all applications which use a Pyramid cookiecutter. For more information, see https://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid_debugtoolbar/en/latest/.

pyramid_exclog¶

A package which logs Pyramid application exception (error) information to a standard Python logger. This add-on is most useful when used in production applications, because the logger can be configured to log to a file, to Unix syslog, to the Windows Event Log, or even to email. See its documentation.

pyramid_handlers¶

An add-on package which allows Pyramid users to create classes that are analogues of Pylons 1 "controllers". See https://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid_handlers/en/latest/.

pyramid_jinja2¶

Jinja2 templating system bindings for Pyramid, documented at https://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid_jinja2/en/latest/. This package also includes a scaffold named pyramid_jinja2_starter, which creates an application package based on the Jinja2 templating system.

pyramid_redis_sessions¶

A package by Eric Rasmussen which allows you to store Pyramid session data in a Redis database. See https://pypi.org/project/pyramid_redis_sessions/ for more information.

pyramid_zcml¶

An add-on package to Pyramid which allows applications to be configured via ZCML. It is available on PyPI. If you use pyramid_zcml, you can use ZCML as an alternative to imperative configuration or configuration decoration.

Python¶

The programming language in which Pyramid is written.

Python Packaging Authority¶

The Python Packaging Authority (PyPA) is a working group that maintains many of the relevant projects in Python packaging.

renderer¶

A serializer which converts non-Response return values from a view into a string, and ultimately into a response, usually through view configuration. Using a renderer can make writing views that require templating or other serialization, like JSON, less tedious. See Writing View Callables Which Use a Renderer for more information.

renderer factory¶

A factory which creates a renderer. See Adding and Changing Renderers for more information.

renderer globals¶

Values injected as names into a renderer by a pyramid.event.BeforeRender event.

Repoze¶

"Repoze" is essentially a "brand" of software developed by Agendaless Consulting and a set of contributors. The term has no special intrinsic meaning. The project's website has more information. The software developed "under the brand" is available in a Subversion repository. Pyramid was originally known as repoze.bfg.

repoze.catalog¶

An indexing and search facility (fielded and full-text) based on zope.index. See the documentation for more information.

repoze.lemonade¶

Zope2 CMF-like data structures and helper facilities for CA-and-ZODB-based applications useful within Pyramid applications.

repoze.who¶

Authentication middleware for WSGI applications. It can be used by Pyramid to provide authentication information.

repoze.workflow¶

Barebones workflow for Python apps . It can be used by Pyramid to form a workflow system.

request¶

An object that represents an HTTP request, usually an instance of the pyramid.request.Request class. See Request and Response Objects (narrative) and pyramid.request (API documentation) for information about request objects.

request factory¶

An object which, provided a WSGI environment as a single positional argument, returns a Pyramid-compatible request.

request type¶

An attribute of a request that allows for specialization of view invocation based on arbitrary categorization. The every request object that Pyramid generates and manipulates has one or more interface objects attached to it. The default interface attached to a request object is pyramid.interfaces.IRequest.

resource¶

An object representing a node in the resource tree of an application. If traversal is used, a resource is an element in the resource tree traversed by the system. When traversal is used, a resource becomes the context of a view. If URL dispatch is used, a single resource is generated for each request and is used as the context resource of a view.

Resource Location¶

The act of locating a context resource given a request. Traversal and URL dispatch are the resource location subsystems used by Pyramid.

resource tree¶

A nested set of dictionary-like objects, each of which is a resource. The act of traversal uses the resource tree to find a context resource.

response¶

An object returned by a view callable that represents response data returned to the requesting user agent. It must implement the pyramid.interfaces.IResponse interface. A response object is typically an instance of the pyramid.response.Response class or a subclass such as pyramid.httpexceptions.HTTPFound. See Request and Response Objects for information about response objects.

response adapter¶

A callable which accepts an arbitrary object and "converts" it to a pyramid.response.Response object. See Changing How Pyramid Treats View Responses for more information.

response callback¶

A user-defined callback executed by the router at a point after a response object is successfully created.

See also

See also the stdlib documentation for more information.

Translation Context¶

A string representing the "context" in which a translation was made within a given translation domain. See the gettext documentation, 11.2.5 Using contexts for solving ambiguities for more information.

Translation Directory¶

A translation directory is a gettext translation directory. It contains language folders, which themselves contain LC_MESSAGES folders, which contain .mo files. Each .mo file represents a set of translations for a language in a translation domain. The name of the .mo file (minus the .mo extension) is the translation domain name.

Translation Domain¶

A string representing the "context" in which a translation was made. For example the word "java" might be translated differently if the translation domain is "programming-languages" than would be if the translation domain was "coffee". A translation domain is represented by a collection of .mo files within one or more translation directory directories.

Translation String¶

An instance of pyramid.i18n.TranslationString, which is a class that behaves like a string, but has several extra attributes such as domain, msgid, and mapping for use during translation. Translation strings are usually created by hand within software, but are sometimes created on the behalf of the system for automatic template translation. For more information, see Internationalization and Localization.

Translator¶

A callable which receives a translation string and returns a translated string for the purposes of internationalization. A localizer supplies a translator to a Pyramid application accessible via its translate method.

traversal¶

The act of descending "up" a tree of resource objects from a root resource in order to find a context resource. The Pyramid router performs traversal of resource objects when a root factory is specified. See the Traversal chapter for more information. Traversal can be performed instead of URL dispatch or can be combined with URL dispatch. See Combining Traversal and URL Dispatch for more information about combining traversal and URL dispatch (advanced).

truthy string¶

A string represeting a value of True. Acceptable values are t, true, y, yes, on and 1.

tween¶

A bit of code that sits between the Pyramid router's main request handling function and the upstream WSGI component that uses Pyramid as its 'app'. The word "tween" is a contraction of "between". A tween may be used by Pyramid framework extensions, to provide, for example, Pyramid-specific view timing support, bookkeeping code that examines exceptions before they are returned to the upstream WSGI application, or a variety of other features. Tweens behave a bit like WSGI middleware but they have the benefit of running in a context in which they have access to the Pyramid application registry as well as the Pyramid rendering machinery. See Registering Tweens.

URL dispatch¶

An alternative to traversal as a mechanism for locating a context resource for a view. When you use a route in your Pyramid application via a route configuration, you are using URL dispatch. See the URL Dispatch for more information.

userid¶

A userid is the string representation of an identity. Just like the identity, it should identify the user associated with the current request. Oftentimes this is the ID of the user object in a database.

Venusian¶

Venusian is a library which allows framework authors to defer decorator actions. Instead of taking actions when a function (or class) decorator is executed at import time, the action usually taken by the decorator is deferred until a separate "scan" phase. Pyramid relies on Venusian to provide a basis for its scan feature.

venv¶

The Python Packaging Authority's recommended tool for creating virtual environments on Python 3.3 and greater.

Note: whenever you encounter commands prefixed with $VENV (Unix) or %VENV (Windows), know that that is the environment variable whose value is the root of the virtual environment in question.

view¶

Common vernacular for a view callable.

view callable¶

A "view callable" is a callable Python object which is associated with a view configuration; it returns a response object . A view callable accepts a single argument: request, which will be an instance of a request object. An alternate calling convention allows a view to be defined as a callable which accepts a pair of arguments: context and request: this calling convention is useful for traversal-based applications in which a context is always very important. A view callable is the primary mechanism by which a developer writes user interface code within Pyramid. See Views for more information about Pyramid view callables.

view configuration¶

View configuration is the act of associating a view callable with configuration information. This configuration information helps map a given request to a particular view callable and it can influence the response of a view callable. Pyramid views can be configured via imperative configuration, or by a special @view_config decorator coupled with a scan. See View Configuration for more information about view configuration.

view deriver¶

A view deriver is a composable component of the view pipeline which is used to create a view callable. A view deriver is a callable implementing the pyramid.interfaces.IViewDeriver interface. Examples of built-in derivers including view mapper, the permission checker, and applying a renderer to a dictionary returned from the view.

View handler¶

A view handler ties together pyramid.config.Configurator.add_route() and pyramid.config.Configurator.add_view() to make it more convenient to register a collection of views as a single class when using URL dispatch. View handlers ship as part of the pyramid_handlers add-on package.

View Lookup¶

The act of finding and invoking the "best" view callable, given a request and a context resource.

view mapper¶

A view mapper is a class which implements the pyramid.interfaces.IViewMapperFactory interface, which performs view argument and return value mapping. This is a plug point for extension builders, not normally used by "civilians".

view name¶

The "URL name" of a view, e.g index.html. If a view is configured without a name, its name is considered to be the empty string (which implies the default view).

view predicate¶

An argument to a view configuration which evaluates to True or False for a given request. All predicates attached to a view configuration must evaluate to true for the associated view to be considered as a possible callable for a given request.

virtual environment¶

An isolated Python environment that allows packages to be installed for use by a particular application, rather than being installed system wide.

virtual root¶

A resource object representing the "virtual" root of a request; this is typically the physical root object unless Virtual Hosting is in use.

virtualenv¶

The virtualenv tool that allows one to create virtual environments. In Python 3.3 and greater, venv is the preferred tool.

Note: whenever you encounter commands prefixed with $VENV (Unix) or %VENV (Windows), know that that is the environment variable whose value is the root of the virtual environment in question.

Waitress¶

A WSGI server that runs on Unix and Windows under Python 2.7+ and Python 3.3+. Projects generated via Pyramid cookiecutters use Waitress as a WGSI server. See https://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/waitress/en/latest/ for detailed information.

WebOb¶

WebOb is a WSGI request/response library created by Ian Bicking.

WebTest¶

WebTest is a package which can help you write functional tests for your WSGI application.

WSGI¶

Web Server Gateway Interface. This is a Python standard for connecting web applications to web servers, similar to the concept of Java Servlets. Pyramid requires that your application be served as a WSGI application.

ZCML¶

Zope Configuration Markup Language, an XML dialect used by Zope and pyramid_zcml for configuration tasks.

ZODB¶

Zope Object Database, a persistent Python object store.

Zope¶

The Z Object Publishing Framework, a full-featured Python web framework.

Zope Component Architecture¶

The Zope Component Architecture (aka ZCA) is a system which allows for application pluggability and complex dispatching based on objects which implement an interface. Pyramid uses the ZCA "under the hood" to perform view dispatching and other application configuration tasks.

ZPT¶

The Zope Page Template templating language.

Glossary¶

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