How to access your bus client

You create your bus client in your bus module (typically called bus.py) with the line:

# Creating your bus client in your bus.py file
import lightbus

bus = lightbus.create()

However, you will often need to make use of your bus client in other areas of your codebase. For example, you may need to fire an event when a web form is submitted.

You can access the bus client in two ways.

The first approach is to import your bus client directly from your bus module, in the same way you would import anything else in your codebase:

# For example
from bus import bus

# ...or if your service has its own package
from my_service.bus import bus

You should use this approach in code which is specific to your service (i.e. non-shared/non-library code). This approach is more explicit (good), but hard codes the path to your bus module (bad for shared code).

Method 2: get_bus()

The second approach uses the lightbus.get_bus() function. This will use the module loading configuration to determine the bus module location. If the bus module has already been imported, then the module's bus attribute will simply be returned. Otherwise the bus module will be imported first.

# Anywhere in your codebase
import lightbus

bus = lightbus.get_bus()

This approach is best suited to when you do not know where your bus module will be at runtime. This could be the case when:

  • Writing shared code which is used by multiple services
  • Writing a third party library