Skip to content

Backend Style Guidelines

David Aaron Suddjian edited this page Feb 17, 2022 · 3 revisions

This is a list of statements that describe how we do backend development in Superset. While they might not be 100% true for all files in the repo, they represent the gold standard we strive towards for backend quality and style.

  • We use a monolithic Python/Flask/Flask-AppBuilder backend, with small single-responsibility satellite services where necessary.
  • Files are generally organized by feature or object type. Within each domain, we can have api controllers, models, schemas, commands, and data access objects (dao).
  • API controllers use Marshmallow Schemas to serialize/deserialize data.
  • Authentication and authorization are controlled by the security manager.
  • We use Pytest for unit and integration tests. These live in the tests directory.
  • We add tests for every new piece of functionality added to the backend.
  • We use pytest fixtures to share setup between tests.
  • We use sqlalchemy to access both Superset's application database, and users' analytics databases.
  • We make changes backwards compatible whenever possible.
  • We use Swagger for API documentation, with docs written inline on the API endpoint code.
  • We prefer thin ORM models, putting shared functionality in other utilities.
  • Several linters/checkers are used to maintain consistent code style and type safety: pylint, pypy, black, isort.
  • __init__.py files are kept empty to avoid implicit dependencies.
Clone this wiki locally