Get or fetch mechanism

[Paillat-dev]

Have a mechanism to optionally fetch an object ONLY if not present in the cache. A proposed implementation was a fetch=True kwarg on the get_x methods. TBD

[Lumabots]

I’m not sure if that’s a good idea. The purpose of the get_or_fetch function is to be a utility that tries to retrieve data and, if it fails, simply returns a default value. In contrast, the fetch function is specifically designed to perform a request to the API and raises an error if there’s an issue.

[Paillat-dev]

@DefiDebauchery I think we discussed this asp, what do you think ?

Other propals:

async def get_user[T: Any](self, user_id: int, use_cache: bool = False, default: T | Undefined = MISSING) -> :
    ...

async def fetch_user[T: Any](self, user_id: int, get_first: bool = False, default: T | Undefined = MISSING) -> :
    ...

[Paillat-dev]

class Guild:
    get_or_fetch_emoji = partial(get_or_fetch, obj_type=discord.GuildEmoji)

[Lumabots]

In my opinion, we should maintain the same behavior for both get and fetch to clearly distinguish between the library side and the API side.

Additionally, fetch should be as simple as possible since it’s not an utility function but a straightforward request. However, we could add a cache=True argument.

Here’s what I envision:

• async def get_role(role_id: int) -> just get the role and return None if not found

• async def fetch_role(role_id: int, cache: bool) -> try to get it first, but then fetch and raise an exception if not found

• async def get_or_fetch(object_type, object_id, raise: bool, default: Any): this is an actual utility function, possibility to raise or return default.

I don’t believe we should have separate get_or_fetch functions for each object, as it would lead to excessive duplication of functionality.

• fetch_role, get_or_fetch_role, and get_or_fetch(discord.Role) feels like to much, in addition these get_or_fetch_object functions can be implemented quite easily by the user themselves.