CubicWeb - The Semantic Web is a construction game!

CubicWeb is a semantic web application framework, licensed under the LGPL, empowering developers to efficiently build web applications by reusing components (called cubes) and following the well known object-oriented design principles.

Main Features

• an engine driven by the explicit data model of the application,

• a query language named RQL similar to W3C’s SPARQL,

• a selection+view mechanism for semi-automatic XHTML/XML/JSON/text generation,

• a library of reusable components (data model and views) that fulfill common needs,

• the power and flexibility of the Python programming language,

• the reliability of SQL databases, LDAP directories and Mercurial for storage backends.

Created in early 2000s from an R&D effort and still maintained, supporting 100,000s of daily visits at some production sites, CubicWeb is a proven end to end solution for semantic web application development promoting quality, reusability and efficiency.

First steps

• From scratch:

  • Install a CubicWeb environment

  • Configure a CubicWeb environment

  • Deploy a CubicWeb application

• Guides:

  • Introduction to CubicWeb

  • Basics: Building a simple blog with CubicWeb

  • Advanced: Building a photo gallery with CubicWeb

Cubicweb core principle

• Why cubicweb?

  • The Core Concepts of CubicWeb

• Cubes:

  • What is a Cube?

  • Creating a new cube from scratch

  • Standard structure for a cube

• Registries:

  • What are registries

  • How to use registries

• Data-centric framework:

  • Data schema with YAMS

  • Relation Query Language (RQL)

Routing

CubicWeb offers two different ways of routing : one internal to CubicWeb and a one with the pyramid framework.

• Principle:

  • cubicweb and pyramid

  • the CW request object

  • the pyramid request object

  • encapsulation of the CW request in the pyramid request

  • bw_compat and the options to use, fallback when CW doesn’t find anything

• CubicWeb routing:

  • url publishers

  • url rewriters

• Pyramid routing:

  • general principles

  • predicates

  • tweens

  • content negociation

Front development

• With Javascript / Typescript (using React):

  • general principle

  • how to install and integrate js tooling into CW

  • cwelements

  • rql browser

• With Pyramid:

  • general integration with CubicWeb

  • The renderers

  • Jinja2 templates

  • example of usages with CW

• With CubicWeb Views:

  • Introduction

  • Select a view with registers

  • Facets

  • How to use javascript inside CW views

  • Customize CSS

• RDF:

  • the RDF adaptator

  • RDFLib integration into CW

Data model and management

• Data in CubicWeb:

  • Data model

  • Data as objects

• Data Import:

  • Standard Import

  • massive store

Security

• Security:

  • The security model

  • Permissions management with Pyramid

  • CSRF protection in CubicWeb

Migrate your schema

Each time the schema is updated, two action are needed : update the underlying tables and update the corresponding data.

• Migrations:

  • Execute and write migration script

  • Debug script migration

Cubicweb configuration files

• Base configuration:

  • The all-in-one.conf

  • The Pyramid configuration

• Advanced configuration:

  • The database connection pooler

Common Web application tools

• Test

  • CubicWeb

  • Pyramid

• Caching

  • HTTP cache management

• Internationalization

  • Localize your application

• Full text indexation

  • RQL search bar

Development

• Command line tool:

  • cubicweb-ctl tool

• Performances:

  • Profiling your application

• Debugging:

  • Command line options for debugging

  • Debugging configuration directly in the code

  • Pyramid debug toolbar

  • Debug channels

• Good practices:

  • tox

  • check-manifest

  • mypy

  • flake8 et black

• CI:

  • Gitlab-ci integration

System administration

• Deployment:

  • Raw python deployment

  • Working with Docker

  • Working with Kubernetes

• Administration:

  • Cubicweb-ctl tool

  • Sources configuration

  • Backup

CubicWeb’s ecosystem

CubicWeb is based on different libraries, in which you may be interested :

• YAMS

• RQL

• logilab-common

• logilab-database

• logilab-constraints

• logilab-mtconverter

How to contribute

• Chat on the matrix room #cubicweb:matrix.logilab.org

• Visio Weekly meeting every Tuesday afternoon (UTC+1). The link is shared in the matrix room

• Discuss on the mailing-list

• Discover on the blog

• Contribute on the forge

• Find published python modules on pypi

• Find published npm modules on npm

• Changelog