In Web2py you can assign lambda to database Field to represent it as text:
Field('duetime', 'time', represent=lambda t,r: t.strftime("%H:%M") if t else '')
With such description when generating SQLForm you will get nice time representation (seconds will not be shown).
But when I want to use data representation in plain HTML view, I get only raw data:
for r in rows: print "Repr: %s Str: %s" % (r.duetime.repr(),r.duetime.str())
Repr: datetime.time(16, 15) Str: 16:15:00
Repr: None Str: None
So it looks like only SQLForm internally generates field representations.
How can I get query result set (Rows) containing data representation instead of raw data?
You can use the Rows.render method. For a single record:
rows = db(query).select()
rendered_row = rows.render(0) # apply "represent" functions to the first row
print rendered_row.duetime
For efficiency, you can limit to which fields the "represent" functions will be applied:
rendered_row = rows.render(0, fields=[db.mytable.duetime])
If you don't pass an index as the first argument to .render(), it returns a generator, allowing you to loop over all rows:
for row in rows.render():
print row.duetime
If you want to loop over a subset of the rows, create the subset and call .render() on the subset:
for row in rows[0:10].render():
print row.duetime
Details in the book.