Mongoengine Support in Version 2

[Bastian-Kuhn]

Hello team,

First of, thank you very much for flask-admin. As already mentioned, in this ticket, my tool heavily depends on mongoengine.

After some first proof of concepts, I found that migration to pymongo would be a huge step backwards. It's for my program, which basically consists of DB Models like a rewrite with fewer features and comfort after. (Example Filters also missing)

As a replacement for flask-mongoengine I found flask-mongoeine-3 which works well, and can replace the old one without any changes of code.

for flask-admin I was able with just some lines of code to make the contrib/mongoengine work again. And my Plan B would to just ship that part with my Project. But since I'm sure others could use it too, I want to ask why It can't stay as part of the flask-admin? I need to fix it anyway for me to keep it working, so I could also help with Pull Requests. I just would need to change everything in order that the tests work again. But the function is already there by changing two imports.

Best Bastian

[samuelhwilliams]

Thanks for the update. Disappointing to hear that pymongo doesn't look like a feasible replacement.

flask-mongoengine-3 is broadly an option. My initial concern is that it appears to quite inactive as far as maintenance goes, and doesn't seem to have a broad base of support (in terms of maintainers).

I'm not really against it per se, but bear in mind I have no personal motivation either as I don't use mongo in my day-to-day so it's not work I'd be heavily invested in.

Flask-Admin is a community maintained project so I think it would be very possible for you to look at adding support for flask-mongoengine-3 back (which hopefully may not be much harder than reverting the PR which took it away and making whatever tweaks/changes are needed for -3 support).

Maybe join the Pallets discord and check out the #pallets-eco channel? I'm happy to look at PRs you put up adding support (back) for it, as and when I can

[karpitsky]

Hello,

My Flask app uses pure MongoEngine and Flask-Admin, and it works perfectly, thanks! Maybe there's an option to remove the Flask-MongoEngine dependency but keep MongoEngine.

As far as I can see, the current version of Flask-Admin uses only the orm and fields functionality from Flask-MongoEngine in the form.py file, but everything else is from MongoEngine.

Additionally, the orm module is deprecated in Flask-MongoEngine.

[Bastian-Kuhn]

As far as I can see, the current version of Flask-Admin uses only the orm and fields functionality from Flask-MongoEngine in the form.py file, but everything else is from MongoEngine.

But isn’t that a crucial part of the code, given its responsibility for the WTF Forms? Otherwise, I could start exploring alternatives, possibly by shifting the related logic from flask_mongoengine into the flask_admin module.

[karpitsky]

I've just tried to replace Flask-MongoEngine imports with MongoEngine and WTForms and it's working fine for me.

Here's the diff.

To be honest, I haven't tested all the field types yet.

[Bastian-Kuhn]

Good idea to remove the requirement completely, will test that. It just will take me some days to start, much to do currently. Thank you very much already.

[samuelhwilliams]

I've just tried to replace Flask-MongoEngine imports with MongoEngine and WTForms and it's working fine for me.

If this is workable, it sounds like a very positive idea and alleviates concerns around maintenance issues with flask-mongoengine and its forks 👍

[Bastian-Kuhn]

@karpitsky I just tested your fixed version of forms.py and It works fine. Perfect