Migration to 2.0.0 and changes

Empty fields are not created in database

If you are already aware about empty string vs None database conflicts, you should know that some string based generated forms behaviour are not consistent between version <=1.0.0 and 2.0.0+.

In version 2.0.0 all fields with empty strings will be considered as None and will not be saved by default (this is easy to change for particular field to keep old behaviour for existed projects).

This behaviour is different from previous versions, where StringField consider empty string as valid value, and save it to database. This is the opposite behavior against original mongoengine project and related database.

Warning

To keep easy migration and correct deprecation steps model_form() and model_fields() still keep old behaviour.

To be completely clear, let look on example. Let make a completely meaningless model, with all field types from mongoengine, like this:

"""example_app.models.py"""
from flask_mongoengine import MongoEngine

db = MongoEngine()


class Todo(db.Document):
    """Test model for AllFieldsModel."""
    string = db.StringField()


class Embedded(db.EmbeddedDocument):
    """Test embedded for AllFieldsModel."""
    string = db.StringField()


class AllFieldsModel(db.Document):
    """Meaningless Document with all field types."""
    binary_field = db.BinaryField()
    boolean_field = db.BooleanField()
    date_field = db.DateField()
    date_time_field = db.DateTimeField()
    decimal_field = db.DecimalField()
    dict_field = db.DictField()
    email_field = db.EmailField()
    embedded_document_field = db.EmbeddedDocumentField(document_type=Embedded)
    file_field = db.FileField()
    float_field = db.FloatField()
    int_field = db.IntField()
    list_field = db.ListField(field=db.StringField)
    reference_field = db.ReferenceField(document_type=Todo)
    sorted_list_field = db.SortedListField(field=db.StringField)
    string_field = db.StringField()
    url_field = db.URLField()
    cached_reference_field = db.CachedReferenceField(document_type=Todo)
    complex_date_time_field = db.ComplexDateTimeField()
    dynamic_field = db.DynamicField()
    embedded_document_list_field = db.EmbeddedDocumentListField(document_type=Embedded)
    enum_field = db.EnumField(enum=[1, 2])
    generic_embedded_document_field = db.GenericEmbeddedDocumentField()
    generic_lazy_reference_field = db.GenericLazyReferenceField()
    geo_json_base_field = db.GeoJsonBaseField()
    geo_point_field = db.GeoPointField()
    image_field = db.ImageField()
    lazy_reference_field = db.LazyReferenceField(document_type=Todo)
    line_string_field = db.LineStringField()
    long_field = db.LongField()
    map_field = db.MapField(field=db.StringField())
    multi_line_string_field = db.MultiLineStringField()
    multi_point_field = db.MultiPointField()
    multi_polygon_field = db.MultiPolygonField()
    point_field = db.PointField()
    polygon_field = db.PolygonField()
    sequence_field = db.SequenceField()
    uuid_field = db.UUIDField()
    generic_reference_field = db.GenericReferenceField(document_type=Todo)
    object_id_field = db.ObjectIdField()

Now let’s make an example instance of such object and save it to db.

from example_app.models import AllFieldsModel

obj = AllFieldsModel()
obj.save()

On database side this document will be created:

{
    "_id": {
        "$oid": "62df93ac3fe82c8656aae60d"
    },
    "dict_field": {},
    "list_field": [],
    "sorted_list_field": [],
    "embedded_document_list_field": [],
    "map_field": {},
    "sequence_field": 1
}

For empty form Flask-Mongoengine 2.0.0 will create exactly the same document, old project version will try to fill some fields, based on StringField.