The SQLAlchemy distribution includes a variety of code examples illustrating a select set of patterns, some typical and some not so typical. All are runnable and can be found in the /examples directory of the distribution. Each example contains a README in its __init__.py file, each of which are listed below.
Additional SQLAlchemy examples, some user contributed, are available on the wiki at http://www.sqlalchemy.org/trac/wiki/UsageRecipes.
Location: /examples/adjacency_list/
An example of a dictionary-of-dictionaries structure mapped using an adjacency list model.
E.g.:
node = TreeNode('rootnode')
node.append('node1')
node.append('node3')
session.add(node)
session.commit()
dump_tree(node)Location: /examples/association/
Examples illustrating the usage of the “association object” pattern, where an intermediary object associates two endpoint objects together.
The first example illustrates a basic association from a User object to a collection or Order objects, each which references a collection of Item objects.
The second example builds upon the first to add the Association Proxy extension.
E.g.:
# create an order
order = Order('john smith')
# append an OrderItem association via the "itemassociations"
# collection with a custom price.
order.itemassociations.append(OrderItem(item('MySQL Crowbar'), 10.99))
# append two more Items via the transparent "items" proxy, which
# will create OrderItems automatically using the default price.
order.items.append(item('SA Mug'))
order.items.append(item('SA Hat'))Location: /examples/custom_attributes/
Two examples illustrating modifications to SQLAlchemy’s attribute management system.
listen_for_events.py illustrates the usage of AttributeExtension to intercept attribute events. It additionally illustrates a way to automatically attach these listeners to all class attributes using a InstrumentationManager.
custom_management.py illustrates much deeper usage of InstrumentationManager as well as collection adaptation, to completely change the underlying method used to store state on an object. This example was developed to illustrate techniques which would be used by other third party object instrumentation systems to interact with SQLAlchemy’s event system and is only intended for very intricate framework integrations.
Location: /examples/beaker_caching/
Illustrates how to embed Beaker cache functionality within the Query object, allowing full cache control as well as the ability to pull “lazy loaded” attributes from long term cache as well.
In this demo, the following techniques are illustrated:
E.g.:
# query for Person objects, specifying cache
q = Session.query(Person).options(FromCache("default", "all_people"))
# specify that each Person's "addresses" collection comes from
# cache too
q = q.options(RelationshipCache("default", "by_person", Person.addresses))
# query
print q.all()To run, both SQLAlchemy and Beaker (1.4 or greater) must be installed or on the current PYTHONPATH. The demo will create a local directory for datafiles, insert initial data, and run. Running the demo a second time will utilize the cache files already present, and exactly one SQL statement against two tables will be emitted - the displayed result however will utilize dozens of lazyloads that all pull from cache.
The demo scripts themselves, in order of complexity, are run as follows:
python examples/beaker_caching/helloworld.py
python examples/beaker_caching/relationship_caching.py
python examples/beaker_caching/advanced.py
python examples/beaker_caching/local_session_caching.py
Listing of files:
environment.py - Establish the Session, the Beaker cache manager, data / cache file paths, and configurations, bootstrap fixture data if necessary.
caching_query.py - Represent functions and classes which allow the usage of Beaker caching with SQLAlchemy. Introduces a query option called FromCache.
model.py - The datamodel, which represents Person that has multiple Address objects, each with PostalCode, City, Country
fixture_data.py - creates demo PostalCode, Address, Person objects in the database.
helloworld.py - the basic idea.
relationship_caching.py - Illustrates how to add cache options on relationship endpoints, so that lazyloads load from cache.
advanced.py - Further examples of how to use FromCache. Combines techniques from the first two scripts.
local_session_caching.py - Grok everything so far ? This example creates a new Beaker container that will persist data in a dictionary which is local to the current session. remove() the session and the cache is gone.
Location: /examples/derived_attributes/
Illustrates a clever technique using Python descriptors to create custom attributes representing SQL expressions when used at the class level, and Python expressions when used at the instance level. In some cases this technique replaces the need to configure the attribute in the mapping, instead relying upon ordinary Python behavior to create custom expression components.
E.g.:
class BaseInterval(object):
@hybrid
def contains(self,point):
return (self.start <= point) & (point < self.end)Location: /examples/graphs/
An example of persistence for a directed graph structure. The graph is stored as a collection of edges, each referencing both a “lower” and an “upper” node in a table of nodes. Basic persistence and querying for lower- and upper- neighbors are illustrated:
n2 = Node(2)
n5 = Node(5)
n2.add_neighbor(n5)
print n2.higher_neighbors()Location: /examples/dynamic_dict/
Illustrates how to place a dictionary-like facade on top of a “dynamic” relation, so that dictionary operations (assuming simple string keys) can operate upon a large collection without loading the full collection at once.
Location: /examples/sharding
A basic example of using the SQLAlchemy Sharding API. Sharding refers to horizontally scaling data across multiple databases.
The basic components of a “sharded” mapping are:
In this example, four sqlite databases will store information about weather data on a database-per-continent basis. We provide example shard_chooser, id_chooser and query_chooser functions. The query_chooser illustrates inspection of the SQL expression element in order to attempt to determine a single shard being requested.
The construction of generic sharding routines is an ambitious approach to the issue of organizing instances among multiple databases. For a more plain-spoken alternative, the “distinct entity” approach is a simple method of assigning objects to different tables (and potentially database nodes) in an explicit way - described on the wiki at EntityName.
Location: /examples/inheritance/
Working examples of single-table, joined-table, and concrete-table inheritance as described in datamapping_inheritance.
Location: /examples/large_collection/
Large collection example.
Illustrates the options to use with relationship() when the list of related objects is very large, including:
Location: /examples/nested_sets/
Illustrates a rudimentary way to implement the “nested sets” pattern for hierarchical data using the SQLAlchemy ORM.
Location: /examples/poly_assoc/
Illustrates polymorphic associations, a method of associating a particular child object with many different types of parent object.
This example is based off the original blog post at http://techspot.zzzeek.org/?p=13 and illustrates three techniques:
Location: /examples/postgis
A naive example illustrating techniques to help embed PostGIS functionality.
This example was originally developed in the hopes that it would be extrapolated into a comprehensive PostGIS integration layer. We are pleased to announce that this has come to fruition as GeoAlchemy.
The example illustrates:
The implementation is limited to only public, well known and simple to use extension points.
E.g.:
print session.query(Road).filter(Road.road_geom.intersects(r1.road_geom)).all()Location: /examples/versioning
Illustrates an extension which creates version tables for entities and stores records for each change. The same idea as Elixir’s versioned extension, but more efficient (uses attribute API to get history) and handles class inheritance. The given extensions generate an anonymous “history” class which represents historical versions of the target object.
Usage is illustrated via a unit test module test_versioning.py, which can be run via nose:
nosetests -w examples/versioning/
A fragment of example usage, using declarative:
from history_meta import VersionedMeta, VersionedListener
Base = declarative_base(metaclass=VersionedMeta, bind=engine)
Session = sessionmaker(extension=VersionedListener())
class SomeClass(Base):
__tablename__ = 'sometable'
id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
name = Column(String(50))
def __eq__(self, other):
assert type(other) is SomeClass and other.id == self.id
sess = Session()
sc = SomeClass(name='sc1')
sess.add(sc)
sess.commit()
sc.name = 'sc1modified'
sess.commit()
assert sc.version == 2
SomeClassHistory = SomeClass.__history_mapper__.class_
assert sess.query(SomeClassHistory).\
filter(SomeClassHistory.version == 1).\
all() \
== [SomeClassHistory(version=1, name='sc1')]To apply VersionedMeta to a subset of classes (probably more typical), the metaclass can be applied on a per-class basis:
from history_meta import VersionedMeta, VersionedListener
Base = declarative_base(bind=engine)
class SomeClass(Base):
__tablename__ = 'sometable'
# ...
class SomeVersionedClass(Base):
__metaclass__ = VersionedMeta
__tablename__ = 'someothertable'
# ...The VersionedMeta is a declarative metaclass - to use the extension with plain mappers, the _history_mapper function can be applied:
from history_meta import _history_mapper
m = mapper(SomeClass, sometable)
_history_mapper(m)
SomeHistoryClass = SomeClass.__history_mapper__.class_Location: /examples/vertical
Illustrates “vertical table” mappings.
A “vertical table” refers to a technique where individual attributes of an object are stored as distinct rows in a table. The “vertical table” technique is used to persist objects which can have a varied set of attributes, at the expense of simple query control and brevity. It is commonly found in content/document management systems in order to represent user-created structures flexibly.
Two variants on the approach are given. In the second, each row references a “datatype” which contains information about the type of information stored in the attribute, such as integer, string, or date.
Example:
shrew = Animal(u'shrew')
shrew[u'cuteness'] = 5
shrew[u'weasel-like'] = False
shrew[u'poisonous'] = True
session.add(shrew)
session.flush()
q = (session.query(Animal).
filter(Animal.facts.any(
and_(AnimalFact.key == u'weasel-like',
AnimalFact.value == True))))
print 'weasel-like animals', q.all()Location: /examples/elementtree/
Illustrates three strategies for persisting and querying XML documents as represented by ElementTree in a relational database. The techniques do not apply any mappings to the ElementTree objects directly, so are compatible with the native cElementTree as well as lxml, and can be adapted to suit any kind of DOM representation system. Querying along xpath-like strings is illustrated as well.
In order of complexity:
E.g.:
# parse an XML file and persist in the database
doc = ElementTree.parse("test.xml")
session.add(Document(file, doc))
session.commit()
# locate documents with a certain path/attribute structure
for document in find_document('/somefile/header/field2[@attr=foo]'):
# dump the XML
print document