Beacon Item

Items are returned by beacon queries and represent one result entry. You should not create an Item yourself. Beacon provides two query functions. The first one is kaa.beacon.query which returns a Query object and the second one is kaa.beacon.get to get the item for a specific filename.

There are currently two kinds of Items. The generic Item class and a File class inheriting from Item.

beacon.get(filename)

Get object for the given filename. This function will raise an exception if the client is not connected and the server is not running for a connect. The function returns an InProgress object with a File object as result.

Methods

An Item uses a dict-like interface to get and set values. If the key starts with tmp: the value is stored temporary in the Item and is not stored in the database. A second Item for the same database entry does not have this attribute and it is lost when the Item is destroyed. See Database Attributes for a list of attributes in the database.

Item.get(key, default=None)

Access attributes of the item. If the attribute is not found the default value (None) will be returned.

Item.__getitem__(key)

Access attributes of the item. This function will never raise an exception. If the attribute is not found, None will be returned.

Item.has_key(key)

Check if the item has a specific attribute set

Item.keys()

List item attributes

Item.__setitem__(key, value)

Set the value of a given attribute. If the key starts with ‘tmp:’, the data will only be valid in this item and not stored in the db.

An Item also provides an interface to access children like files in a directory, delete an Item from the database and initiate an Item to be scanned.

Item.list()

Return a Query object with all subitems of this item. If the client is not connected to the server an empty list will be returned instead.

File.list(recursive=False)

Return a Query object for a query with all files in the directory. If the Item is no directory all subitems will returned similar to the Item list function. This can happen for DVD iso files on hard-disc. If the client is not connected to the server an empty list will be returned instead.

Item.delete()

Delete item from the database (does not work on files)

Item.scan()

Request the item to be scanned.

Attributes

Besides the attributes in the database an Item also has some Python attributes. These attributes are always set no matter of the file behind it is already scanned or not.

beacon.Item.url

URL for the Item. This includes a prefix like file://, dvd:// or http://

beacon.Item.filename

Full path of the file if the Item represents a file or directory. For Item that are no File this attribute is an empty string.

Item.isdir

True if the item is a directory.

Item.isfile

True if the item is a regular file.

Item.thumbnail

Return a Thumbnail for the Item. See Thumbnails for details about thumbnailing works in beacon.

Item.scanned

True if the item is in the database and fully scanned.

Item.ancestors

Return an iterator to walk through the parents.