Slides from my introductory talk to the Django User Group: London (DJUGL) talk in July 2010 at the Guardian.

1. Using FluidDB with Django
(making data “social” with FluidDB).
Nicholas Tollervey
ntoll@fluidinfo.com

2. The Agenda:
What?
Why?
How?
Where?
Django?

3. What?

4. FluidDB is a platform
for the web of things,
each represented by an
openly writable “social”
object.

5. http://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/1428129861/

6. Why?

7. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jointhedots/4622191119/

8. People I know

9. SELECT self-catering-cottage FROM
WHERE location NEAR pubs SERVING
AND pub HAS rating > 7 IN

10. Share, annotate, augment
and re-use information.

11. How?

12. There is only one
FluidDB. All users and
applications share the
same database.

13. • Objects - represent things
• Tags - define objects’ attributes
• Namespaces - organise tags
• Permissions - control access

14. http://ntoll.org/images/93.jpg

15. Data Structure
entity / attribute / value

16. Data Structure
object / tag / value
(in FluidDB parlance)

17. Data Structure
object / tag / value
(optional)

18. Namespaces/Tags
ntoll/rating
terrycojones/books/review
amazon.com/book/title
amazon.com/book/author
amazon.com/book/isbn
esteve/books/cover
timoreilly/has_read

19. about = An id =
“e127475b-eb93-48e1-a24f-dde6825b9ed8”
“book:Dune” object

20. r=
ove
/c
ks
oo
ntoll/
b
ve/
te
es
rating
am
azo
n.c
“87 om/b
-41 ook
=
8-7
517 s/isbn
5
- 6” =
about = An id =
“e127475b-eb93-48e1-a24f-dde6825b9ed8”
“book:Dune” object
= am
az
iew on
timoreill
v
/re s”
r=
s .c
om
ok rm
er tho
/bo wo “D /bo
nes and un ok
erb s/au
ojo ve s e” s/t
t”
y/has_re
ryc I lo itle
k H ok
ter “ =
ran /bo
“F om
ad
n.c
azo
am

21. r=
ove
/c
ks
oo
ntoll/
b
ve/
te
es
rating
am
azo
n.c
“87 om/b
-41 ook
=
8-7
517 s/isbn
5
- 6” =
about = An id =
“e127475b-eb93-48e1-a24f-dde6825b9ed8”
“book:Dune” object
= am
az
iew on
timoreill
v
/re s”
r=
s .c
om
ok rm
er tho
/bo wo “D /bo
nes and un ok boolean
erb s/au
ojo ve s e” s/t
t”
y/has_re
ryc I lo itle
k H ok
ter “ = string (& set)
ran /bo
“F om
numeric
ad
n.c
opaque
azo
am
null

22. snoissimreP
(seem to be back-to-front)

23. r=
Traditional: oo
ks
/c
ove
ntoll/
b
ve/
te
es
rating
am
azo
n.c
“87 om/b
-41 ook
=
8-7
517 s/isbn
5
- 6” =
about = id =
“e127475b-eb93-48e1-a24f-dde6825b9ed8”
“book:Dune”
= am
az
iew on
timoreill
v
/re s”
r=
s .c
om
ok rm
er tho
/bo wo “D /bo
nes and un ok
erb s/au
ojo ve s e” s/t
t”
y/has_re
ryc I lo itle
k H ok
ter “ =
ran /bo
“F om
ad
n.c
azo
am

24. r=
FluidDB: ks
/c
ove
ntoll/
b oo
ve/
te
rating
am es
azo
n.c
“87 om/b
=
-41 ook
8-7
517 s/isbn
5
- 6” =
about = An id =
“e127475b-eb93-48e1-a24f-dde6825b9ed8”
“book:Dune” object
= am
az
view on
/re s” .c
r=
timoreill
s om
ok rm
er tho
/bo wo “D /bo
nes and un ok
erb s/au
ojo ve s e” s/t
t”
ryc I lo itle
k H ok
y/has_re
ter “ =
ran /bo
“F om
n.c
ad
azo
am

25. You control who can see,
read or use your tags.

26. http://www.flickr.com/photos/fixe/3415776837/
Anyone can tag information
to an object.

27. Permissions
• Apply to namespaces, tags and tag-values not objects
• Scoped by actions (e.g. “see”, “create”, “read”)
• Either “open” or “closed” with a list of exceptions

28. FluidDB’s Query Language
• Equality & Inequality: To find objects based on the numeric values or
exact textual values, e.g., tim/rating > 5, or geo/name = "Llandefalle".
• Textual: To find objects based on text matching their tag values, for
example, sally/opinion matches “fantastic”.
• Presence: Use has to request objects that have a given tag. For example,
has sally/opinion.
• Set contents: The contains operator can be used to select objects with a
matching value in a set of strings. The query mary/product-reviews/keywords
contains "kids" would match the object with a tag called /mary/product-
reviews/keywords and value ["cool", "kids", "adventure" ].
• Exclusion: Exclude objects with the except keyword. For example has
nytimes.com/appeared except has james/seen. The except operator
performs a set difference.
• Logic: Query components can be combined with and and or. For example,
has sara/rating and tim/rating > 5.
• Grouping: Parentheses can be used to group query components. For
example, has sara/rating and (tim/rating > 5 or mike/rating > 7).

29. Tags attached to the “about:esteve” object.
{“tagPaths”: [
" “twitter.com/username”,
" “twitter.com/fullname”,
" “tunkrank.com/score”,
" “ntoll/met”,
" “terrycojones/met”,
" “python.org/member”,
" “ub.edu/alumni”,
" “ub.edu/bsc”,
" “uoc.edu/msc”,
" ... etc ...
]}

30. A RESTful API
https://fluiddb.fluidinfo.com/objects/OBJECT_ID/NAMESPACE(s)/TAG
HTTP ‘GET’ returns the value,
HTTP ‘PUT’ adds/updates it etc...
Full API: http://api.fluidinfo.com/fluidDB/api/*/*/*

31. Social data?

32. http://www.flickr.com/photos/8001265@N08/2259250324/
Let me demonstrate!

33. Where?

34. http://fluidinfo.com/

35. • Twitter: @fluidDB @terrycojones @esteve & @ntoll
• http://youtube.com/fluiddb
• #fluiddb on Freenode IRC
• http://groups.google.com/group/fluiddb-users
• http://groups.google.com/group/fluiddb-discuss

36. Lots of 3rd party libraries:
http://fluidinfo.com/developers/libs
Java, Clojure, Lisp, .NET, Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP &
Javascript (all open-source)

37. Django?

38. http://github.com/fluidinfo/django-fluiddb

39. Familiar Models
from django_fluiddb import models
class Foo(models.Model):
bar = models.CharField(‘test/namespace/bar_tag’)
baz = models.IntegerField(‘test/namespace/baz_tag’)

40. Familiar Forms
from django_fluiddb.forms import ModelForm
class FooForm(ModelForm):
class Meta:
model = Foo

41. It’s only the FOM underneath
http://bitbucket.org/aafshar/fom-main/

42. We’re listening to you
though the usual caveats apply ;-)

43. Questions..?