# SQLAlchemy 0.5.7 Documentation

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Version: 0.5.7 Last Updated: 12/26/2009 18:22:23

# SqlSoup

author: | Jonathan Ellis

SqlSoup creates mapped classes on the fly from tables, which are automatically reflected from the database based on name. It is essentially a nicer version of the “row data gateway” pattern.

    >>> from sqlalchemy.ext.sqlsoup import SqlSoup
    >>> soup = SqlSoup('sqlite:///')

    >>> db.users.select(order_by=[db.users.c.name])
    [MappedUsers(name='Bhargan Basepair',email='basepair@example.edu',password='basepair',classname=None,admin=1),
     MappedUsers(name='Joe Student',email='student@example.edu',password='student',classname=None,admin=0)]

Full SqlSoup documentation is on the SQLAlchemy Wiki.

## Introduction

SqlSoup provides a convenient way to access database tables without having to declare table or mapper classes ahead of time.

Suppose we have a database with users, books, and loans tables (corresponding to the PyWebOff dataset, if you’re curious). For testing purposes, we’ll create this db as follows:

    >>> from sqlalchemy import create_engine
    >>> e = create_engine('sqlite:///:memory:')
    >>> for sql in _testsql: e.execute(sql)
    <...

Creating a SqlSoup gateway is just like creating an SQLAlchemy engine:

    >>> from sqlalchemy.ext.sqlsoup import SqlSoup
    >>> db = SqlSoup('sqlite:///:memory:')

or, you can re-use an existing metadata or engine:

    >>> db = SqlSoup(MetaData(e))

You can optionally specify a schema within the database for your SqlSoup:

    # >>> db.schema = myschemaname

## Loading objects

Loading objects is as easy as this:

    >>> users = db.users.all()
    >>> users.sort()
    >>> users
    [MappedUsers(name=u'Joe Student',email=u'student@example.edu',password=u'student',classname=None,admin=0), MappedUsers(name=u'Bhargan Basepair',email=u'basepair@example.edu',password=u'basepair',classname=None,admin=1)]

Of course, letting the database do the sort is better:

    >>> db.users.order_by(db.users.name).all()
    [MappedUsers(name=u'Bhargan Basepair',email=u'basepair@example.edu',password=u'basepair',classname=None,admin=1), MappedUsers(name=u'Joe Student',email=u'student@example.edu',password=u'student',classname=None,admin=0)]

Field access is intuitive:

    >>> users[0].email
    u'student@example.edu'

Of course, you don’t want to load all users very often. Let’s add a WHERE clause. Let’s also switch the order_by to DESC while we’re at it:

    >>> from sqlalchemy import or_, and_, desc
    >>> where = or_(db.users.name=='Bhargan Basepair', db.users.email=='student@example.edu')
    >>> db.users.filter(where).order_by(desc(db.users.name)).all()
    [MappedUsers(name=u'Joe Student',email=u'student@example.edu',password=u'student',classname=None,admin=0), MappedUsers(name=u'Bhargan Basepair',email=u'basepair@example.edu',password=u'basepair',classname=None,admin=1)]

You can also use .first() (to retrieve only the first object from a query) or .one() (like .first when you expect exactly one user – it will raise an exception if more were returned):

    >>> db.users.filter(db.users.name=='Bhargan Basepair').one()
    MappedUsers(name=u'Bhargan Basepair',email=u'basepair@example.edu',password=u'basepair',classname=None,admin=1)

Since name is the primary key, this is equivalent to

    >>> db.users.get('Bhargan Basepair')
    MappedUsers(name=u'Bhargan Basepair',email=u'basepair@example.edu',password=u'basepair',classname=None,admin=1)

This is also equivalent to

    >>> db.users.filter_by(name='Bhargan Basepair').one()
    MappedUsers(name=u'Bhargan Basepair',email=u'basepair@example.edu',password=u'basepair',classname=None,admin=1)

filter_by is like filter, but takes kwargs instead of full clause expressions. This makes it more concise for simple queries like this, but you can’t do complex queries like the or_ above or non-equality based comparisons this way.

### Full query documentation

Get, filter, filter_by, order_by, limit, and the rest of the query methods are explained in detail in the SQLAlchemy documentation.

## Modifying objects

Modifying objects is intuitive:

    >>> user = _
    >>> user.email = 'basepair+nospam@example.edu'
    >>> db.flush()

(SqlSoup leverages the sophisticated SQLAlchemy unit-of-work code, so multiple updates to a single object will be turned into a single `UPDATE` statement when you flush.)

To finish covering the basics, let’s insert a new loan, then delete it:

    >>> book_id = db.books.filter_by(title='Regional Variation in Moss').first().id
    >>> db.loans.insert(book_id=book_id, user_name=user.name)
    MappedLoans(book_id=2,user_name=u'Bhargan Basepair',loan_date=None)
    >>> db.flush()

    >>> loan = db.loans.filter_by(book_id=2, user_name='Bhargan Basepair').one()
    >>> db.delete(loan)
    >>> db.flush()

You can also delete rows that have not been loaded as objects. Let’s do our insert/delete cycle once more, this time using the loans table’s delete method. (For SQLAlchemy experts: note that no flush() call is required since this delete acts at the SQL level, not at the Mapper level.) The same where-clause construction rules apply here as to the select methods.

    >>> db.loans.insert(book_id=book_id, user_name=user.name)
    MappedLoans(book_id=2,user_name=u'Bhargan Basepair',loan_date=None)
    >>> db.flush()
    >>> db.loans.delete(db.loans.book_id==2)

You can similarly update multiple rows at once. This will change the book_id to 1 in all loans whose book_id is 2:

    >>> db.loans.update(db.loans.book_id==2, book_id=1)
    >>> db.loans.filter_by(book_id=1).all()
    [MappedLoans(book_id=1,user_name=u'Joe Student',loan_date=datetime.datetime(2006, 7, 12, 0, 0))]

## Joins

Occasionally, you will want to pull out a lot of data from related tables all at once. In this situation, it is far more efficient to have the database perform the necessary join. (Here we do not have a lot of data but hopefully the concept is still clear.) SQLAlchemy is smart enough to recognize that loans has a foreign key to users, and uses that as the join condition automatically.

    >>> join1 = db.join(db.users, db.loans, isouter=True)
    >>> join1.filter_by(name='Joe Student').all()
    [MappedJoin(name=u'Joe Student',email=u'student@example.edu',password=u'student',classname=None,admin=0,book_id=1,user_name=u'Joe Student',loan_date=datetime.datetime(2006, 7, 12, 0, 0))]

If you’re unfortunate enough to be using MySQL with the default MyISAM storage engine, you’ll have to specify the join condition manually, since MyISAM does not store foreign keys. Here’s the same join again, with the join condition explicitly specified:

    >>> db.join(db.users, db.loans, db.users.name==db.loans.user_name, isouter=True)
    <class 'sqlalchemy.ext.sqlsoup.MappedJoin'>

You can compose arbitrarily complex joins by combining Join objects with tables or other joins. Here we combine our first join with the books table:

    >>> join2 = db.join(join1, db.books)
    >>> join2.all()
    [MappedJoin(name=u'Joe Student',email=u'student@example.edu',password=u'student',classname=None,admin=0,book_id=1,user_name=u'Joe Student',loan_date=datetime.datetime(2006, 7, 12, 0, 0),id=1,title=u'Mustards I Have Known',published_year=u'1989',authors=u'Jones')]

If you join tables that have an identical column name, wrap your join with with_labels, to disambiguate columns with their table name (.c is short for .columns):

    >>> db.with_labels(join1).c.keys()
    [u'users_name', u'users_email', u'users_password', u'users_classname', u'users_admin', u'loans_book_id', u'loans_user_name', u'loans_loan_date']

You can also join directly to a labeled object:

    >>> labeled_loans = db.with_labels(db.loans)
    >>> db.join(db.users, labeled_loans, isouter=True).c.keys()
    [u'name', u'email', u'password', u'classname', u'admin', u'loans_book_id', u'loans_user_name', u'loans_loan_date']

## Relations

You can define relations on SqlSoup classes:

    >>> db.users.relate('loans', db.loans)

These can then be used like a normal SA property:

>     >>> db.users.get('Joe Student').loans
>     [MappedLoans(book_id=1,user_name=u'Joe Student',loan_date=datetime.datetime(2006, 7, 12, 0, 0))]

>     >>> db.users.filter(~db.users.loans.any()).all()
>     [MappedUsers(name=u'Bhargan Basepair',email='basepair+nospam@example.edu',password=u'basepair',classname=None,admin=1)]

relate can take any options that the relation function accepts in normal mapper definition:

    >>> del db._cache['users']
    >>> db.users.relate('loans', db.loans, order_by=db.loans.loan_date, cascade='all, delete-orphan')

## Advanced Use

### Accessing the Session

SqlSoup uses a ScopedSession to provide thread-local sessions. You can get a reference to the current one like this:

    >>> from sqlalchemy.ext.sqlsoup import Session
    >>> session = Session()

Now you have access to all the standard session-based SA features, such as transactions. (SqlSoup’s `flush()` is normally transactionalized, but you can perform manual transaction management if you need a transaction to span multiple flushes.)

### Mapping arbitrary Selectables

SqlSoup can map any SQLAlchemy `Selectable` with the map method. Let’s map a `Select` object that uses an aggregate function; we’ll use the SQLAlchemy `Table` that SqlSoup introspected as the basis. (Since we’re not mapping to a simple table or join, we need to tell SQLAlchemy how to find the primary key which just needs to be unique within the select, and not necessarily correspond to a real PK in the database.)

    >>> from sqlalchemy import select, func
    >>> b = db.books._table
    >>> s = select([b.c.published_year, func.count('*').label('n')], from_obj=[b], group_by=[b.c.published_year])
    >>> s = s.alias('years_with_count')
    >>> years_with_count = db.map(s, primary_key=[s.c.published_year])
    >>> years_with_count.filter_by(published_year='1989').all()
    [MappedBooks(published_year=u'1989',n=1)]

Obviously if we just wanted to get a list of counts associated with book years once, raw SQL is going to be less work. The advantage of mapping a Select is reusability, both standalone and in Joins. (And if you go to full SQLAlchemy, you can perform mappings like this directly to your object models.)

An easy way to save mapped selectables like this is to just hang them on your db object:

    >>> db.years_with_count = years_with_count

Python is flexible like that!

### Raw SQL

SqlSoup works fine with SQLAlchemy’s text block support.

You can also access the SqlSoup’s engine attribute to compose SQL directly. The engine’s `execute` method corresponds to the one of a DBAPI cursor, and returns a `ResultProxy` that has `fetch` methods you would also see on a cursor:

    >>> rp = db.bind.execute('select name, email from users order by name')
    >>> for name, email in rp.fetchall(): print name, email
    Bhargan Basepair basepair+nospam@example.edu
    Joe Student student@example.edu

You can also pass this engine object to other SQLAlchemy constructs.

### Dynamic table names

You can load a table whose name is specified at runtime with the entity() method:

    >>> tablename = 'loans'
    >>> db.entity(tablename) == db.loans
    True

entity() also takes an optional schema argument. If none is specified, the default schema is used.

## Extra tests

Boring tests here. Nothing of real expository value.

    >>> db.users.filter_by(classname=None).order_by(db.users.name).all()
    [MappedUsers(name=u'Bhargan Basepair',email=u'basepair+nospam@example.edu',password=u'basepair',classname=None,admin=1), MappedUsers(name=u'Joe Student',email=u'student@example.edu',password=u'student',classname=None,admin=0)]

    >>> db.nopk
    ...
    PKNotFoundError: table 'nopk' does not have a primary key defined [columns: i]

    >>> db.nosuchtable
    ...
    NoSuchTableError: nosuchtable

    >>> years_with_count.insert(published_year='2007', n=1)
    ...
    InvalidRequestError: SQLSoup can only modify mapped Tables (found: Alias)

    [tests clear()]
    >>> db.loans.count()
    1
    >>> _ = db.loans.insert(book_id=1, user_name='Bhargan Basepair')
    >>> db.expunge_all()
    >>> db.flush()
    >>> db.loans.count()
    1

exception `sqlalchemy.ext.sqlsoup.``PKNotFoundError`

class `sqlalchemy.ext.sqlsoup.``SqlSoup`(*args, **kwargs)
  `__init__`(*args, **kwargs)

    Initialize a new `SqlSoup`.

    args may either be an `SQLEngine` or a set of arguments suitable for passing to `create_engine`.

  `bind`
  `clear`()
  `delete`(*args, **kwargs)
  `engine`
  `entity`(attr, schema=None)
  `expunge_all`()
  `flush`()
  `join`(*args, **kwargs)
  `map`(selectable, **kwargs)
  `with_labels`(item)