SQLAlchemy 1.1 Documentation
Engine Configuration¶
The Engine
is the starting point for any SQLAlchemy application. It’s
“home base” for the actual database and its DBAPI, delivered to the SQLAlchemy
application through a connection pool and a Dialect
, which describes how
to talk to a specific kind of database/DBAPI combination.
The general structure can be illustrated as follows:

Where above, an Engine
references both a
Dialect
and a Pool
,
which together interpret the DBAPI’s module functions as well as the behavior
of the database.
Creating an engine is just a matter of issuing a single call,
create_engine()
:
from sqlalchemy import create_engine
engine = create_engine('postgresql://scott:tiger@localhost:5432/mydatabase')
The above engine creates a Dialect
object tailored towards
PostgreSQL, as well as a Pool
object which will establish a DBAPI
connection at localhost:5432
when a connection request is first received.
Note that the Engine
and its underlying Pool
do not
establish the first actual DBAPI connection until the Engine.connect()
method is called, or an operation which is dependent on this method such as
Engine.execute()
is invoked. In this way, Engine
and
Pool
can be said to have a lazy initialization behavior.
The Engine
, once created, can either be used directly to interact with the database,
or can be passed to a Session
object to work with the ORM. This section
covers the details of configuring an Engine
. The next section, Working with Engines and Connections,
will detail the usage API of the Engine
and similar, typically for non-ORM
applications.
Supported Databases¶
SQLAlchemy includes many Dialect
implementations for various
backends. Dialects for the most common databases are included with SQLAlchemy; a handful
of others require an additional install of a separate dialect.
See the section Dialects for information on the various backends available.
Database Urls¶
The create_engine()
function produces an Engine
object based
on a URL. These URLs follow RFC-1738, and usually can include username, password,
hostname, database name as well as optional keyword arguments for additional configuration.
In some cases a file path is accepted, and in others a “data source name” replaces
the “host” and “database” portions. The typical form of a database URL is:
dialect+driver://username:password@host:port/database
Dialect names include the identifying name of the SQLAlchemy dialect,
a name such as sqlite
, mysql
, postgresql
, oracle
, or mssql
.
The drivername is the name of the DBAPI to be used to connect to
the database using all lowercase letters. If not specified, a “default” DBAPI
will be imported if available - this default is typically the most widely
known driver available for that backend.
Examples for common connection styles follow below. For a full index of detailed information on all included dialects as well as links to third-party dialects, see Dialects.
Postgresql¶
The Postgresql dialect uses psycopg2 as the default DBAPI. pg8000 is also available as a pure-Python substitute:
# default
engine = create_engine('postgresql://scott:tiger@localhost/mydatabase')
# psycopg2
engine = create_engine('postgresql+psycopg2://scott:tiger@localhost/mydatabase')
# pg8000
engine = create_engine('postgresql+pg8000://scott:tiger@localhost/mydatabase')
More notes on connecting to Postgresql at PostgreSQL.
MySQL¶
The MySQL dialect uses mysql-python as the default DBAPI. There are many MySQL DBAPIs available, including MySQL-connector-python and OurSQL:
# default
engine = create_engine('mysql://scott:tiger@localhost/foo')
# mysql-python
engine = create_engine('mysql+mysqldb://scott:tiger@localhost/foo')
# MySQL-connector-python
engine = create_engine('mysql+mysqlconnector://scott:tiger@localhost/foo')
# OurSQL
engine = create_engine('mysql+oursql://scott:tiger@localhost/foo')
More notes on connecting to MySQL at MySQL.
Oracle¶
The Oracle dialect uses cx_oracle as the default DBAPI:
engine = create_engine('oracle://scott:tiger@127.0.0.1:1521/sidname')
engine = create_engine('oracle+cx_oracle://scott:tiger@tnsname')
More notes on connecting to Oracle at Oracle.
Microsoft SQL Server¶
The SQL Server dialect uses pyodbc as the default DBAPI. pymssql is also available:
# pyodbc
engine = create_engine('mssql+pyodbc://scott:tiger@mydsn')
# pymssql
engine = create_engine('mssql+pymssql://scott:tiger@hostname:port/dbname')
More notes on connecting to SQL Server at Microsoft SQL Server.
SQLite¶
SQLite connects to file-based databases, using the Python built-in
module sqlite3
by default.
As SQLite connects to local files, the URL format is slightly different. The “file” portion of the URL is the filename of the database. For a relative file path, this requires three slashes:
# sqlite://<nohostname>/<path>
# where <path> is relative:
engine = create_engine('sqlite:///foo.db')
And for an absolute file path, the three slashes are followed by the absolute path:
#Unix/Mac - 4 initial slashes in total
engine = create_engine('sqlite:////absolute/path/to/foo.db')
#Windows
engine = create_engine('sqlite:///C:\\path\\to\\foo.db')
#Windows alternative using raw string
engine = create_engine(r'sqlite:///C:\path\to\foo.db')
To use a SQLite :memory:
database, specify an empty URL:
engine = create_engine('sqlite://')
More notes on connecting to SQLite at SQLite.
Engine Creation API¶
-
sqlalchemy.
create_engine
(*args, **kwargs)¶ Create a new
Engine
instance.The standard calling form is to send the URL as the first positional argument, usually a string that indicates database dialect and connection arguments:
engine = create_engine("postgresql://scott:tiger@localhost/test")
Additional keyword arguments may then follow it which establish various options on the resulting
Engine
and its underlyingDialect
andPool
constructs:engine = create_engine("mysql://scott:tiger@hostname/dbname", encoding='latin1', echo=True)
The string form of the URL is
dialect[+driver]://user:password@host/dbname[?key=value..]
, wheredialect
is a database name such asmysql
,oracle
,postgresql
, etc., anddriver
the name of a DBAPI, such aspsycopg2
,pyodbc
,cx_oracle
, etc. Alternatively, the URL can be an instance ofURL
.**kwargs
takes a wide variety of options which are routed towards their appropriate components. Arguments may be specific to theEngine
, the underlyingDialect
, as well as thePool
. Specific dialects also accept keyword arguments that are unique to that dialect. Here, we describe the parameters that are common to mostcreate_engine()
usage.Once established, the newly resulting
Engine
will request a connection from the underlyingPool
onceEngine.connect()
is called, or a method which depends on it such asEngine.execute()
is invoked. ThePool
in turn will establish the first actual DBAPI connection when this request is received. Thecreate_engine()
call itself does not establish any actual DBAPI connections directly.매개 변수: - case_sensitive=True¶ –
if False, result column names will match in a case-insensitive fashion, that is,
row['SomeColumn']
.버전 0.8으로 변경: By default, result row names match case-sensitively. In version 0.7 and prior, all matches were case-insensitive.
- connect_args¶ – a dictionary of options which will be
passed directly to the DBAPI’s
connect()
method as additional keyword arguments. See the example at Custom DBAPI connect() arguments. - convert_unicode=False¶ –
if set to True, sets the default behavior of
convert_unicode
on theString
type toTrue
, regardless of a setting ofFalse
on an individualString
type, thus causing allString
-based columns to accommodate Pythonunicode
objects. This flag is useful as an engine-wide setting when using a DBAPI that does not natively support Pythonunicode
objects and raises an error when one is received (such as pyodbc with FreeTDS).See
String
for further details on what this flag indicates. - creator¶ – a callable which returns a DBAPI connection. This creation function will be passed to the underlying connection pool and will be used to create all new database connections. Usage of this function causes connection parameters specified in the URL argument to be bypassed.
- echo=False¶ – if True, the Engine will log all statements
as well as a repr() of their parameter lists to the engines
logger, which defaults to sys.stdout. The
echo
attribute ofEngine
can be modified at any time to turn logging on and off. If set to the string"debug"
, result rows will be printed to the standard output as well. This flag ultimately controls a Python logger; see Configuring Logging for information on how to configure logging directly. - echo_pool=False¶ – if True, the connection pool will log all checkouts/checkins to the logging stream, which defaults to sys.stdout. This flag ultimately controls a Python logger; see Configuring Logging for information on how to configure logging directly.
- encoding¶ –
Defaults to
utf-8
. This is the string encoding used by SQLAlchemy for string encode/decode operations which occur within SQLAlchemy, outside of the DBAPI. Most modern DBAPIs feature some degree of direct support for Pythonunicode
objects, what you see in Python 2 as a string of the formu'some string'
. For those scenarios where the DBAPI is detected as not supporting a Pythonunicode
object, this encoding is used to determine the source/destination encoding. It is not used for those cases where the DBAPI handles unicode directly.To properly configure a system to accommodate Python
unicode
objects, the DBAPI should be configured to handle unicode to the greatest degree as is appropriate - see the notes on unicode pertaining to the specific target database in use at Dialects.Areas where string encoding may need to be accommodated outside of the DBAPI include zero or more of:
- the values passed to bound parameters, corresponding to
the
Unicode
type or theString
type whenconvert_unicode
isTrue
; - the values returned in result set columns corresponding
to the
Unicode
type or theString
type whenconvert_unicode
isTrue
; - the string SQL statement passed to the DBAPI’s
cursor.execute()
method; - the string names of the keys in the bound parameter
dictionary passed to the DBAPI’s
cursor.execute()
as well ascursor.setinputsizes()
methods; - the string column names retrieved from the DBAPI’s
cursor.description
attribute.
When using Python 3, the DBAPI is required to support all of the above values as Python
unicode
objects, which in Python 3 are just known asstr
. In Python 2, the DBAPI does not specify unicode behavior at all, so SQLAlchemy must make decisions for each of the above values on a per-DBAPI basis - implementations are completely inconsistent in their behavior. - the values passed to bound parameters, corresponding to
the
- execution_options¶ – Dictionary execution options which will
be applied to all connections. See
execution_options()
- implicit_returning=True¶ – When
True
, a RETURNING- compatible construct, if available, will be used to fetch newly generated primary key values when a single row INSERT statement is emitted with no existing returning() clause. This applies to those backends which support RETURNING or a compatible construct, including Postgresql, Firebird, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server. Set this toFalse
to disable the automatic usage of RETURNING. - isolation_level¶ –
this string parameter is interpreted by various dialects in order to affect the transaction isolation level of the database connection. The parameter essentially accepts some subset of these string arguments:
"SERIALIZABLE"
,"REPEATABLE_READ"
,"READ_COMMITTED"
,"READ_UNCOMMITTED"
and"AUTOCOMMIT"
. Behavior here varies per backend, and individual dialects should be consulted directly.Note that the isolation level can also be set on a per-
Connection
basis as well, using theConnection.execution_options.isolation_level
feature.더 보기
Connection.default_isolation_level
- view default levelConnection.execution_options.isolation_level
- set perConnection
isolation levelPostgresql Transaction Isolation
Setting Transaction Isolation Levels - for the ORM
- label_length=None¶ – optional integer value which limits
the size of dynamically generated column labels to that many
characters. If less than 6, labels are generated as
“_(counter)”. If
None
, the value ofdialect.max_identifier_length
is used instead. - listeners¶ – A list of one or more
PoolListener
objects which will receive connection pool events. - logging_name¶ – String identifier which will be used within the “name” field of logging records generated within the “sqlalchemy.engine” logger. Defaults to a hexstring of the object’s id.
- max_overflow=10¶ – the number of connections to allow in
connection pool “overflow”, that is connections that can be
opened above and beyond the pool_size setting, which defaults
to five. this is only used with
QueuePool
. - module=None¶ – reference to a Python module object (the module
itself, not its string name). Specifies an alternate DBAPI module to
be used by the engine’s dialect. Each sub-dialect references a
specific DBAPI which will be imported before first connect. This
parameter causes the import to be bypassed, and the given module to
be used instead. Can be used for testing of DBAPIs as well as to
inject “mock” DBAPI implementations into the
Engine
. - paramstyle=None¶ – The paramstyle
to use when rendering bound parameters. This style defaults to the
one recommended by the DBAPI itself, which is retrieved from the
.paramstyle
attribute of the DBAPI. However, most DBAPIs accept more than one paramstyle, and in particular it may be desirable to change a “named” paramstyle into a “positional” one, or vice versa. When this attribute is passed, it should be one of the values"qmark"
,"numeric"
,"named"
,"format"
or"pyformat"
, and should correspond to a parameter style known to be supported by the DBAPI in use. - pool=None¶ – an already-constructed instance of
Pool
, such as aQueuePool
instance. If non-None, this pool will be used directly as the underlying connection pool for the engine, bypassing whatever connection parameters are present in the URL argument. For information on constructing connection pools manually, see Connection Pooling. - poolclass=None¶ – a
Pool
subclass, which will be used to create a connection pool instance using the connection parameters given in the URL. Note this differs frompool
in that you don’t actually instantiate the pool in this case, you just indicate what type of pool to be used. - pool_logging_name¶ – String identifier which will be used within the “name” field of logging records generated within the “sqlalchemy.pool” logger. Defaults to a hexstring of the object’s id.
- pool_size=5¶ – the number of connections to keep open
inside the connection pool. This used with
QueuePool
as well asSingletonThreadPool
. WithQueuePool
, apool_size
setting of 0 indicates no limit; to disable pooling, setpoolclass
toNullPool
instead. - pool_recycle=-1¶ – this setting causes the pool to recycle connections after the given number of seconds has passed. It defaults to -1, or no timeout. For example, setting to 3600 means connections will be recycled after one hour. Note that MySQL in particular will disconnect automatically if no activity is detected on a connection for eight hours (although this is configurable with the MySQLDB connection itself and the server configuration as well).
- pool_reset_on_return='rollback'¶ –
set the “reset on return” behavior of the pool, which is whether
rollback()
,commit()
, or nothing is called upon connections being returned to the pool. See the docstring forreset_on_return
atPool
.버전 0.7.6에 추가.
- pool_timeout=30¶ – number of seconds to wait before giving
up on getting a connection from the pool. This is only used
with
QueuePool
. - strategy='plain'¶ –
selects alternate engine implementations. Currently available are:
- the
threadlocal
strategy, which is described in Using the Threadlocal Execution Strategy; - the
mock
strategy, which dispatches all statement execution to a function passed as the argumentexecutor
. See example in the FAQ.
- the
- executor=None¶ – a function taking arguments
(sql, *multiparams, **params)
, to which themock
strategy will dispatch all statement execution. Used only bystrategy='mock'
.
- case_sensitive=True¶ –
-
sqlalchemy.
engine_from_config
(configuration, prefix='sqlalchemy.', **kwargs)¶ Create a new Engine instance using a configuration dictionary.
The dictionary is typically produced from a config file.
The keys of interest to
engine_from_config()
should be prefixed, e.g.sqlalchemy.url
,sqlalchemy.echo
, etc. The ‘prefix’ argument indicates the prefix to be searched for. Each matching key (after the prefix is stripped) is treated as though it were the corresponding keyword argument to acreate_engine()
call.The only required key is (assuming the default prefix)
sqlalchemy.url
, which provides the database URL.A select set of keyword arguments will be “coerced” to their expected type based on string values. The set of arguments is extensible per-dialect using the
engine_config_types
accessor.매개 변수: - configuration¶ – A dictionary (typically produced from a config file, but this is not a requirement). Items whose keys start with the value of ‘prefix’ will have that prefix stripped, and will then be passed to create_engine.
- prefix¶ – Prefix to match and then strip from keys in ‘configuration’.
- kwargs¶ – Each keyword argument to
engine_from_config()
itself overrides the corresponding item taken from the ‘configuration’ dictionary. Keyword arguments should not be prefixed.
-
sqlalchemy.engine.url.
make_url
(name_or_url)¶ Given a string or unicode instance, produce a new URL instance.
The given string is parsed according to the RFC 1738 spec. If an existing URL object is passed, just returns the object.
-
class
sqlalchemy.engine.url.
URL
(drivername, username=None, password=None, host=None, port=None, database=None, query=None)¶ Represent the components of a URL used to connect to a database.
This object is suitable to be passed directly to a
create_engine()
call. The fields of the URL are parsed from a string by themake_url()
function. the string format of the URL is an RFC-1738-style string.All initialization parameters are available as public attributes.
매개 변수: - drivername¶ – the name of the database backend. This name will correspond to a module in sqlalchemy/databases or a third party plug-in.
- username¶ – The user name.
- password¶ – database password.
- host¶ – The name of the host.
- port¶ – The port number.
- database¶ – The database name.
- query¶ – A dictionary of options to be passed to the dialect and/or the DBAPI upon connect.
-
get_dialect
()¶ Return the SQLAlchemy database dialect class corresponding to this URL’s driver name.
-
translate_connect_args
(names=[], **kw)¶ Translate url attributes into a dictionary of connection arguments.
Returns attributes of this url (host, database, username, password, port) as a plain dictionary. The attribute names are used as the keys by default. Unset or false attributes are omitted from the final dictionary.
매개 변수:
Pooling¶
The Engine
will ask the connection pool for a
connection when the connect()
or execute()
methods are called. The
default connection pool, QueuePool
, will open connections to the
database on an as-needed basis. As concurrent statements are executed,
QueuePool
will grow its pool of connections to a
default size of five, and will allow a default “overflow” of ten. Since the
Engine
is essentially “home base” for the
connection pool, it follows that you should keep a single
Engine
per database established within an
application, rather than creating a new one for each connection.
주석
QueuePool
is not used by default for SQLite engines. See
SQLite for details on SQLite connection pool usage.
For more information on connection pooling, see Connection Pooling.
Custom DBAPI connect() arguments¶
Custom arguments used when issuing the connect()
call to the underlying
DBAPI may be issued in three distinct ways. String-based arguments can be
passed directly from the URL string as query arguments:
db = create_engine('postgresql://scott:tiger@localhost/test?argument1=foo&argument2=bar')
If SQLAlchemy’s database connector is aware of a particular query argument, it may convert its type from string to its proper type.
create_engine()
also takes an argument connect_args
which is an additional dictionary that will be passed to connect()
. This can be used when arguments of a type other than string are required, and SQLAlchemy’s database connector has no type conversion logic present for that parameter:
db = create_engine('postgresql://scott:tiger@localhost/test', connect_args = {'argument1':17, 'argument2':'bar'})
The most customizable connection method of all is to pass a creator
argument, which specifies a callable that returns a DBAPI connection:
def connect():
return psycopg.connect(user='scott', host='localhost')
db = create_engine('postgresql://', creator=connect)
Configuring Logging¶
Python’s standard logging module is used to
implement informational and debug log output with SQLAlchemy. This allows
SQLAlchemy’s logging to integrate in a standard way with other applications
and libraries. The echo
and echo_pool
flags that are present on
create_engine()
, as well as the echo_uow
flag used on
Session
, all interact with regular loggers.
This section assumes familiarity with the above linked logging module. All
logging performed by SQLAlchemy exists underneath the sqlalchemy
namespace, as used by logging.getLogger('sqlalchemy')
. When logging has
been configured (i.e. such as via logging.basicConfig()
), the general
namespace of SA loggers that can be turned on is as follows:
sqlalchemy.engine
- controls SQL echoing. set tologging.INFO
for SQL query output,logging.DEBUG
for query + result set output.sqlalchemy.dialects
- controls custom logging for SQL dialects. See the documentation of individual dialects for details.sqlalchemy.pool
- controls connection pool logging. set tologging.INFO
or lower to log connection pool checkouts/checkins.sqlalchemy.orm
- controls logging of various ORM functions. set tologging.INFO
for information on mapper configurations.
For example, to log SQL queries using Python logging instead of the echo=True
flag:
import logging
logging.basicConfig()
logging.getLogger('sqlalchemy.engine').setLevel(logging.INFO)
By default, the log level is set to logging.WARN
within the entire
sqlalchemy
namespace so that no log operations occur, even within an
application that has logging enabled otherwise.
The echo
flags present as keyword arguments to
create_engine()
and others as well as the echo
property
on Engine
, when set to True
, will first
attempt to ensure that logging is enabled. Unfortunately, the logging
module provides no way of determining if output has already been configured
(note we are referring to if a logging configuration has been set up, not just
that the logging level is set). For this reason, any echo=True
flags will
result in a call to logging.basicConfig()
using sys.stdout as the
destination. It also sets up a default format using the level name, timestamp,
and logger name. Note that this configuration has the affect of being
configured in addition to any existing logger configurations. Therefore,
when using Python logging, ensure all echo flags are set to False at all
times, to avoid getting duplicate log lines.
The logger name of instance such as an Engine
or Pool
defaults to using a truncated hex identifier
string. To set this to a specific name, use the “logging_name” and
“pool_logging_name” keyword arguments with sqlalchemy.create_engine()
.
주석
The SQLAlchemy Engine
conserves Python function call overhead
by only emitting log statements when the current logging level is detected
as logging.INFO
or logging.DEBUG
. It only checks this level when
a new connection is procured from the connection pool. Therefore when
changing the logging configuration for an already-running application, any
Connection
that’s currently active, or more commonly a
Session
object that’s active in a transaction, won’t log any
SQL according to the new configuration until a new Connection
is procured (in the case of Session
, this is
after the current transaction ends and a new one begins).