Syncing files from published Apps

Previously (before 4.x) Domino had a feature to sync files from within the app but later with subsequent versions this was deprecated.

So how do users now sync files from within an app ?

By using the Python bindings for the Domino API, which is available with the python-domino library. It has a list of methods to perform functions like creation of project, list runs, etc. 

The particular method we would be using in this instance is files_upload which accepts path and file as arguments.

How to set up python-domino ?

python-domino is compatible with different versions of Domino, more info on https://github.com/dominodatalab/python-domino.

Installation :

python-domino is now available on PyPi. You can install with the following command:

pip install dominodatalab

Previously these Python bindings were not available in PyPi. You can also install the latest version from our Github master :

pip install https://github.com/dominodatalab/python-domino/archive/master.zip

If you are adding it in a docker file, you must add RUN to the beginning. You can also add python-domino to your requirements.txt as per below:

git+git://github.com/dominodatalab/python-domino.git

And to install a lower version of the library, for example 0.3.5, use the following :

pip install https://github.com/dominodatalab/python-domino/archive/0.3.5.zip

Setting up a connection to interact with your Domino deployment :

This will be done by creating a new instance of Domino :

class Domino(project, api_key=None, host=None, domino_token_file=None)

Parameter project is accepted in the form of ownerusername/projectname

How to use the files_upload method ?

files_upload which accepts path and file as arguments in the form files_upload(path,filename) is used to upload a Python file object into the specified path inside the project.

The parameters, both of which are required, are:

• path: The path to save the file to. For example, /README.md will write to the root directory of the project while /data/numbers.csv will save the file to a subfolder named data (if the data folder does not yet exist, it will be created)
• file: A Python file object. For example, f = open("authors.txt","rb")

An Example :

From https://github.com/dominodatalab/python-domino/blob/master/examples/upload_file.py

from domino import Domino
import os
output_dir = "results"
# connect to domino; be sure to have these environment variables set
#  (runs inside a Domino executor automatically set these for you)
domino = Domino("ownerusername/projectname",
      api_key=os.environ['DOMINO_USER_API_KEY'],
      host=os.environ['DOMINO_API_HOST'])
f = open('testfile.txt', 'rb')
r = domino.files_upload("/a_new_file.txt", f)
if r.status_code == 201:
      print(":) Upload successful")
else:
      print("!! Upload failed")

The app will need to run the above whenever a file is uploaded or created, even scheduled if needed but updated with the source/destination names and folders.