Define an extension to the sqlalchemy.ext.declarative
system
which automatically generates mapped classes and relationships from a database
schema, typically though not necessarily one which is reflected.
New in version 0.9.1: Added sqlalchemy.ext.automap
.
It is hoped that the AutomapBase
system provides a quick
and modernized solution to the problem that the very famous
SQLSoup
also tries to solve, that of generating a quick and rudimentary object
model from an existing database on the fly. By addressing the issue strictly
at the mapper configuration level, and integrating fully with existing
Declarative class techniques, AutomapBase
seeks to provide
a well-integrated approach to the issue of expediently auto-generating ad-hoc
mappings.
The simplest usage is to reflect an existing database into a new model.
We create a new AutomapBase
class in a similar manner as to how
we create a declarative base class, using automap_base()
.
We then call AutomapBase.prepare()
on the resulting base class,
asking it to reflect the schema and produce mappings:
from sqlalchemy.ext.automap import automap_base
from sqlalchemy.orm import Session
from sqlalchemy import create_engine
Base = automap_base()
# engine, suppose it has two tables 'user' and 'address' set up
engine = create_engine("sqlite:///mydatabase.db")
# reflect the tables
Base.prepare(engine, reflect=True)
# mapped classes are now created with names by default
# matching that of the table name.
User = Base.classes.user
Address = Base.classes.address
session = Session(engine)
# rudimentary relationships are produced
session.add(Address(email_address="foo@bar.com", user=User(name="foo")))
session.commit()
# collection-based relationships are by default named
# "<classname>_collection"
print (u1.address_collection)
Above, calling AutomapBase.prepare()
while passing along the
AutomapBase.prepare.reflect
parameter indicates that the
MetaData.reflect()
method will be called on this declarative base
classes’ MetaData
collection; then, each viable
Table
within the MetaData
will get a new mapped class
generated automatically. The ForeignKeyConstraint
objects which
link the various tables together will be used to produce new, bidirectional
relationship()
objects between classes. The classes and relationships
follow along a default naming scheme that we can customize. At this point,
our basic mapping consisting of related User
and Address
classes is
ready to use in the traditional way.
Note
By viable, we mean that for a table to be mapped, it must specify a primary key. Additionally, if the table is detected as being a pure association table between two other tables, it will not be directly mapped and will instead be configured as a many-to-many table between the mappings for the two referring tables.
We can pass a pre-declared MetaData
object to automap_base()
.
This object can be constructed in any way, including programmatically, from
a serialized file, or from itself being reflected using
MetaData.reflect()
. Below we illustrate a combination of reflection and
explicit table declaration:
from sqlalchemy import create_engine, MetaData, Table, Column, ForeignKey
from sqlalchemy.ext.automap import automap_base
engine = create_engine("sqlite:///mydatabase.db")
# produce our own MetaData object
metadata = MetaData()
# we can reflect it ourselves from a database, using options
# such as 'only' to limit what tables we look at...
metadata.reflect(engine, only=['user', 'address'])
# ... or just define our own Table objects with it (or combine both)
Table('user_order', metadata,
Column('id', Integer, primary_key=True),
Column('user_id', ForeignKey('user.id'))
)
# we can then produce a set of mappings from this MetaData.
Base = automap_base(metadata=metadata)
# calling prepare() just sets up mapped classes and relationships.
Base.prepare()
# mapped classes are ready
User, Address, Order = Base.classes.user, Base.classes.address,\
Base.classes.user_order
The sqlalchemy.ext.automap
extension allows classes to be defined
explicitly, in a way similar to that of the DeferredReflection
class.
Classes that extend from AutomapBase
act like regular declarative
classes, but are not immediately mapped after their construction, and are
instead mapped when we call AutomapBase.prepare()
. The
AutomapBase.prepare()
method will make use of the classes we’ve
established based on the table name we use. If our schema contains tables
user
and address
, we can define one or both of the classes to be used:
from sqlalchemy.ext.automap import automap_base
from sqlalchemy import create_engine
# automap base
Base = automap_base()
# pre-declare User for the 'user' table
class User(Base):
__tablename__ = 'user'
# override schema elements like Columns
user_name = Column('name', String)
# override relationships too, if desired.
# we must use the same name that automap would use for the
# relationship, and also must refer to the class name that automap will
# generate for "address"
address_collection = relationship("address", collection_class=set)
# reflect
engine = create_engine("sqlite:///mydatabase.db")
Base.prepare(engine, reflect=True)
# we still have Address generated from the tablename "address",
# but User is the same as Base.classes.User now
Address = Base.classes.address
u1 = session.query(User).first()
print (u1.address_collection)
# the backref is still there:
a1 = session.query(Address).first()
print (a1.user)
Above, one of the more intricate details is that we illustrated overriding
one of the relationship()
objects that automap would have created.
To do this, we needed to make sure the names match up with what automap
would normally generate, in that the relationship name would be
User.address_collection
and the name of the class referred to, from
automap’s perspective, is called address
, even though we are referring to
it as Address
within our usage of this class.
sqlalchemy.ext.automap
is tasked with producing mapped classes and
relationship names based on a schema, which means it has decision points in how
these names are determined. These three decision points are provided using
functions which can be passed to the AutomapBase.prepare()
method, and
are known as classname_for_table()
,
name_for_scalar_relationship()
,
and name_for_collection_relationship()
. Any or all of these
functions are provided as in the example below, where we use a “camel case”
scheme for class names and a “pluralizer” for collection names using the
Inflect package:
import re
import inflect
def camelize_classname(base, tablename, table):
"Produce a 'camelized' class name, e.g. "
"'words_and_underscores' -> 'WordsAndUnderscores'"
return str(tablename[0].upper() + \
re.sub(r'_([a-z])', lambda m: m.group(1).upper(), tablename[1:]))
_pluralizer = inflect.engine()
def pluralize_collection(base, local_cls, referred_cls, constraint):
"Produce an 'uncamelized', 'pluralized' class name, e.g. "
"'SomeTerm' -> 'some_terms'"
referred_name = referred_cls.__name__
uncamelized = re.sub(r'[A-Z]',
lambda m: "_%s" % m.group(0).lower(),
referred_name)[1:]
pluralized = _pluralizer.plural(uncamelized)
return pluralized
from sqlalchemy.ext.automap import automap_base
Base = automap_base()
engine = create_engine("sqlite:///mydatabase.db")
Base.prepare(engine, reflect=True,
classname_for_table=camelize_classname,
name_for_collection_relationship=pluralize_collection
)
From the above mapping, we would now have classes User
and Address
,
where the collection from User
to Address
is called
User.addresses
:
User, Address = Base.classes.User, Base.classes.Address
u1 = User(addresses=[Address(email="foo@bar.com")])
The vast majority of what automap accomplishes is the generation of
relationship()
structures based on foreign keys. The mechanism
by which this works for many-to-one and one-to-many relationships is as
follows:
A given Table
, known to be mapped to a particular class,
is examined for ForeignKeyConstraint
objects.
From each ForeignKeyConstraint
, the remote Table
object present is matched up to the class to which it is to be mapped,
if any, else it is skipped.
As the ForeignKeyConstraint
we are examining corresponds to a
reference from the immediate mapped class, the relationship will be set up
as a many-to-one referring to the referred class; a corresponding
one-to-many backref will be created on the referred class referring
to this class.
If any of the columns that are part of the ForeignKeyConstraint
are not nullable (e.g. nullable=False
), a
cascade
keyword argument
of all, delete-orphan
will be added to the keyword arguments to
be passed to the relationship or backref. If the
ForeignKeyConstraint
reports that
ForeignKeyConstraint.ondelete
is set to CASCADE
for a not null or SET NULL
for a nullable
set of columns, the option passive_deletes
flag is set to True
in the set of relationship keyword arguments.
Note that not all backends support reflection of ON DELETE.
New in version 1.0.0: - automap will detect non-nullable foreign key
constraints when producing a one-to-many relationship and establish
a default cascade of all, delete-orphan
if so; additionally,
if the constraint specifies ForeignKeyConstraint.ondelete
of CASCADE
for non-nullable or SET NULL
for nullable columns,
the passive_deletes=True
option is also added.
The names of the relationships are determined using the
AutomapBase.prepare.name_for_scalar_relationship
and
AutomapBase.prepare.name_for_collection_relationship
callable functions. It is important to note that the default relationship
naming derives the name from the the actual class name. If you’ve
given a particular class an explicit name by declaring it, or specified an
alternate class naming scheme, that’s the name from which the relationship
name will be derived.
The classes are inspected for an existing mapped property matching these
names. If one is detected on one side, but none on the other side,
AutomapBase
attempts to create a relationship on the missing side,
then uses the relationship.back_populates
parameter in order to
point the new relationship to the other side.
In the usual case where no relationship is on either side,
AutomapBase.prepare()
produces a relationship()
on the
“many-to-one” side and matches it to the other using the
relationship.backref
parameter.
Production of the relationship()
and optionally the backref()
is handed off to the AutomapBase.prepare.generate_relationship
function, which can be supplied by the end-user in order to augment
the arguments passed to relationship()
or backref()
or to
make use of custom implementations of these functions.
The AutomapBase.prepare.generate_relationship
hook can be used
to add parameters to relationships. For most cases, we can make use of the
existing automap.generate_relationship()
function to return
the object, after augmenting the given keyword dictionary with our own
arguments.
Below is an illustration of how to send
relationship.cascade
and
relationship.passive_deletes
options along to all one-to-many relationships:
from sqlalchemy.ext.automap import generate_relationship
def _gen_relationship(base, direction, return_fn,
attrname, local_cls, referred_cls, **kw):
if direction is interfaces.ONETOMANY:
kw['cascade'] = 'all, delete-orphan'
kw['passive_deletes'] = True
# make use of the built-in function to actually return
# the result.
return generate_relationship(base, direction, return_fn,
attrname, local_cls, referred_cls, **kw)
from sqlalchemy.ext.automap import automap_base
from sqlalchemy import create_engine
# automap base
Base = automap_base()
engine = create_engine("sqlite:///mydatabase.db")
Base.prepare(engine, reflect=True,
generate_relationship=_gen_relationship)
sqlalchemy.ext.automap
will generate many-to-many relationships, e.g.
those which contain a secondary
argument. The process for producing these
is as follows:
A given Table
is examined for ForeignKeyConstraint
objects, before any mapped class has been assigned to it.
If the table contains two and exactly two ForeignKeyConstraint
objects, and all columns within this table are members of these two
ForeignKeyConstraint
objects, the table is assumed to be a
“secondary” table, and will not be mapped directly.
The two (or one, for self-referential) external tables to which the
Table
refers to are matched to the classes to which they will be
mapped, if any.
If mapped classes for both sides are located, a many-to-many bi-directional
relationship()
/ backref()
pair is created between the two
classes.
The override logic for many-to-many works the same as that of one-to-many/
many-to-one; the generate_relationship()
function is called upon
to generate the structures and existing attributes will be maintained.
sqlalchemy.ext.automap
will not generate any relationships between
two classes that are in an inheritance relationship. That is, with two
classes given as follows:
class Employee(Base):
__tablename__ = 'employee'
id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
type = Column(String(50))
__mapper_args__ = {
'polymorphic_identity':'employee', 'polymorphic_on': type
}
class Engineer(Employee):
__tablename__ = 'engineer'
id = Column(Integer, ForeignKey('employee.id'), primary_key=True)
__mapper_args__ = {
'polymorphic_identity':'engineer',
}
The foreign key from Engineer
to Employee
is used not for a
relationship, but to establish joined inheritance between the two classes.
Note that this means automap will not generate any relationships
for foreign keys that link from a subclass to a superclass. If a mapping
has actual relationships from subclass to superclass as well, those
need to be explicit. Below, as we have two separate foreign keys
from Engineer
to Employee
, we need to set up both the relationship
we want as well as the inherit_condition
, as these are not things
SQLAlchemy can guess:
class Employee(Base):
__tablename__ = 'employee'
id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
type = Column(String(50))
__mapper_args__ = {
'polymorphic_identity':'employee', 'polymorphic_on':type
}
class Engineer(Employee):
__tablename__ = 'engineer'
id = Column(Integer, ForeignKey('employee.id'), primary_key=True)
favorite_employee_id = Column(Integer, ForeignKey('employee.id'))
favorite_employee = relationship(Employee,
foreign_keys=favorite_employee_id)
__mapper_args__ = {
'polymorphic_identity':'engineer',
'inherit_condition': id == Employee.id
}
In the case of naming conflicts during mapping, override any of
classname_for_table()
, name_for_scalar_relationship()
,
and name_for_collection_relationship()
as needed. For example, if
automap is attempting to name a many-to-one relationship the same as an
existing column, an alternate convention can be conditionally selected. Given
a schema:
CREATE TABLE table_a (
id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY
);
CREATE TABLE table_b (
id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
table_a INTEGER,
FOREIGN KEY(table_a) REFERENCES table_a(id)
);
The above schema will first automap the table_a
table as a class named
table_a
; it will then automap a relationship onto the class for table_b
with the same name as this related class, e.g. table_a
. This
relationship name conflicts with the mapping column table_b.table_a
,
and will emit an error on mapping.
We can resolve this conflict by using an underscore as follows:
def name_for_scalar_relationship(base, local_cls, referred_cls, constraint):
name = referred_cls.__name__.lower()
local_table = local_cls.__table__
if name in local_table.columns:
newname = name + "_"
warnings.warn(
"Already detected name %s present. using %s" %
(name, newname))
return newname
return name
Base.prepare(engine, reflect=True,
name_for_scalar_relationship=name_for_scalar_relationship)
Alternatively, we can change the name on the column side. The columns that are mapped can be modified using the technique described at Naming Columns Distinctly from Attribute Names, by assigning the column explicitly to a new name:
Base = automap_base()
class TableB(Base):
__tablename__ = 'table_b'
_table_a = Column('table_a', ForeignKey('table_a.id'))
Base.prepare(engine, reflect=True)
As noted previously, automap has no dependency on reflection, and can make
use of any collection of Table
objects within a MetaData
collection. From this, it follows that automap can also be used
generate missing relationships given an otherwise complete model that fully
defines table metadata:
from sqlalchemy.ext.automap import automap_base
from sqlalchemy import Column, Integer, String, ForeignKey
Base = automap_base()
class User(Base):
__tablename__ = 'user'
id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
name = Column(String)
class Address(Base):
__tablename__ = 'address'
id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
email = Column(String)
user_id = Column(ForeignKey('user.id'))
# produce relationships
Base.prepare()
# mapping is complete, with "address_collection" and
# "user" relationships
a1 = Address(email='u1')
a2 = Address(email='u2')
u1 = User(address_collection=[a1, a2])
assert a1.user is u1
Above, given mostly complete User
and Address
mappings, the
ForeignKey
which we defined on Address.user_id
allowed a
bidirectional relationship pair Address.user
and
User.address_collection
to be generated on the mapped classes.
Note that when subclassing AutomapBase
,
the AutomapBase.prepare()
method is required; if not called, the classes
we’ve declared are in an un-mapped state.
sqlalchemy.ext.automap.
automap_base
(declarative_base=None, **kw)¶Produce a declarative automap base.
This function produces a new base class that is a product of the
AutomapBase
class as well a declarative base produced by
declarative.declarative_base()
.
All parameters other than declarative_base
are keyword arguments
that are passed directly to the declarative.declarative_base()
function.
declarative_base¶ – an existing class produced by
declarative.declarative_base()
. When this is passed, the function
no longer invokes declarative.declarative_base()
itself, and all
other keyword arguments are ignored.
**kw¶ – keyword arguments are passed along to
declarative.declarative_base()
.
sqlalchemy.ext.automap.
AutomapBase
¶Base class for an “automap” schema.
The AutomapBase
class can be compared to the “declarative base”
class that is produced by the declarative.declarative_base()
function. In practice, the AutomapBase
class is always used
as a mixin along with an actual declarative base.
A new subclassable AutomapBase
is typically instantiated
using the automap_base()
function.
See also
classes
= None¶An instance of util.Properties
containing classes.
This object behaves much like the .c
collection on a table. Classes
are present under the name they were given, e.g.:
Base = automap_base()
Base.prepare(engine=some_engine, reflect=True)
User, Address = Base.classes.User, Base.classes.Address
prepare
(engine=None, reflect=False, schema=None, classname_for_table=<function classname_for_table>, collection_class=<class 'list'>, name_for_scalar_relationship=<function name_for_scalar_relationship>, name_for_collection_relationship=<function name_for_collection_relationship>, generate_relationship=<function generate_relationship>)¶Extract mapped classes and relationships from the MetaData
and
perform mappings.
engine¶ – an Engine
or Connection
with which
to perform schema reflection, if specified.
If the AutomapBase.prepare.reflect
argument is False,
this object is not used.
reflect¶ – if True, the MetaData.reflect()
method is called
on the MetaData
associated with this AutomapBase
.
The Engine
passed via
AutomapBase.prepare.engine
will be used to perform the
reflection if present; else, the MetaData
should already be
bound to some engine else the operation will fail.
classname_for_table¶ – callable function which will be used to
produce new class names, given a table name. Defaults to
classname_for_table()
.
name_for_scalar_relationship¶ – callable function which will be
used to produce relationship names for scalar relationships. Defaults
to name_for_scalar_relationship()
.
name_for_collection_relationship¶ – callable function which will
be used to produce relationship names for collection-oriented
relationships. Defaults to name_for_collection_relationship()
.
generate_relationship¶ – callable function which will be used to
actually generate relationship()
and backref()
constructs. Defaults to generate_relationship()
.
collection_class¶ – the Python collection class that will be used
when a new relationship()
object is created that represents a
collection. Defaults to list
.
schema¶ –
When present in conjunction with the
AutomapBase.prepare.reflect
flag, is passed to
MetaData.reflect()
to indicate the primary schema where tables
should be reflected from. When omitted, the default schema in use
by the database connection is used.
New in version 1.1.
sqlalchemy.ext.automap.
classname_for_table
(base, tablename, table)¶Return the class name that should be used, given the name of a table.
The default implementation is:
return str(tablename)
Alternate implementations can be specified using the
AutomapBase.prepare.classname_for_table
parameter.
a string class name.
Note
In Python 2, the string used for the class name must be a
non-Unicode object, e.g. a str()
object. The .name
attribute
of Table
is typically a Python unicode subclass, so the
str()
function should be applied to this name, after accounting for
any non-ASCII characters.
sqlalchemy.ext.automap.
name_for_scalar_relationship
(base, local_cls, referred_cls, constraint)¶Return the attribute name that should be used to refer from one class to another, for a scalar object reference.
The default implementation is:
return referred_cls.__name__.lower()
Alternate implementations can be specified using the
AutomapBase.prepare.name_for_scalar_relationship
parameter.
base¶ – the AutomapBase
class doing the prepare.
local_cls¶ – the class to be mapped on the local side.
referred_cls¶ – the class to be mapped on the referring side.
constraint¶ – the ForeignKeyConstraint
that is being
inspected to produce this relationship.
sqlalchemy.ext.automap.
name_for_collection_relationship
(base, local_cls, referred_cls, constraint)¶Return the attribute name that should be used to refer from one class to another, for a collection reference.
The default implementation is:
return referred_cls.__name__.lower() + "_collection"
Alternate implementations
can be specified using the
AutomapBase.prepare.name_for_collection_relationship
parameter.
base¶ – the AutomapBase
class doing the prepare.
local_cls¶ – the class to be mapped on the local side.
referred_cls¶ – the class to be mapped on the referring side.
constraint¶ – the ForeignKeyConstraint
that is being
inspected to produce this relationship.
sqlalchemy.ext.automap.
generate_relationship
(base, direction, return_fn, attrname, local_cls, referred_cls, **kw)¶Generate a relationship()
or backref()
on behalf of two
mapped classes.
An alternate implementation of this function can be specified using the
AutomapBase.prepare.generate_relationship
parameter.
The default implementation of this function is as follows:
if return_fn is backref:
return return_fn(attrname, **kw)
elif return_fn is relationship:
return return_fn(referred_cls, **kw)
else:
raise TypeError("Unknown relationship function: %s" % return_fn)
base¶ – the AutomapBase
class doing the prepare.
direction¶ – indicate the “direction” of the relationship; this will
be one of ONETOMANY
, MANYTOONE
, MANYTOMANY
.
return_fn¶ – the function that is used by default to create the
relationship. This will be either relationship()
or
backref()
. The backref()
function’s result will be used to
produce a new relationship()
in a second step, so it is critical
that user-defined implementations correctly differentiate between the two
functions, if a custom relationship function is being used.
attrname¶ – the attribute name to which this relationship is being
assigned. If the value of generate_relationship.return_fn
is
the backref()
function, then this name is the name that is being
assigned to the backref.
local_cls¶ – the “local” class to which this relationship or backref will be locally present.
referred_cls¶ – the “referred” class to which the relationship or backref refers to.
**kw¶ – all additional keyword arguments are passed along to the function.
a relationship()
or backref()
construct, as dictated
by the generate_relationship.return_fn
parameter.