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UNIT - V

The Python programming language has powerful features for database

programming. Python supports various databases like SQLite, MySQL,
Oracle, Sybase, PostgreSQL, etc. Python also supports Data Definition
Language (DDL), Data Manipulation Language (DML) and Data Query
Statements.
The Python standard for database interfaces is the Python DB-API (application
programming interface). Most Python database interfaces adhere to this
standard.

Here is the list of available Python database interfaces: Python Database

Interfaces and APIs(application programming interface)

Benefits of Python for database programming

There are many good reasons to use Python for programming database
applications:
● Programming in Python is arguably more efficient and faster compared
to other languages.
● Python is famous for its portability.
● It is platform independent.
● Python supports SQL cursors.
● In many programming languages, the application developer needs to
take care of the open and closed connections of the database, to avoid
further exceptions and errors. In Python, these connections are taken
care of.
● Python supports relational database systems.
● Python database APIs are compatible with various databases, so it is
very easy to migrate and port database application interfaces.
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DB-API (SQL-API) for Python

Python DB-API is independent of any database engine, which enables you to
write Python scripts to access any database engine.
The Python DB API implementation for MySQL is MySQLdb. For PostgreSQL, it
supports psycopg, PyGresQL and pyPgSQL modules. DB-API implementations
for Oracle are dc_oracle2 and cx_oracle.
Pydb2 is the DB-API implementation for DB2. Python’s DB-API consists of
connection objects, cursor objects, standard exceptions and some other
module contents.

Connection objects
Connection objects create a connection with the database and these are further
used for different transactions. These connection objects are also used as
representatives of the database session.
A connection is created as follows:

>>>conn = MySQLdb.connect('library', user='suhas', password='python')

You can use a connection object for calling methods like commit(), rollback()
and close() as shown below:
1. Commit: a commit is the updating of a record in a database. In the
context of a database transaction, a commit refers to the saving of data
permanently after a set of tentative changes.
A commit ends a transaction within a relational database and allows all
other users to see the changes.
2. Rollback: In database technologies, a rollback is an operation that
returns the database to some previous state.
Rollbacks are important for database integrity because they mean that
the database can be restored to a clean copy even after erroneous
operations are performed.

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>>>cur = conn.cursor() //creates new cursor object for executing SQL

statements
>>>conn.commit() //Commits the transactions
>>>conn.rollback() //Roll back the transactions
>>>conn.close() //closes the connection
>>>conn.callproc(proc,param) //call stored procedure for execution
>>>conn.getsource(proc) //fetches stored procedure code

Cursor objects
Cursor is one of the powerful features of SQL. These are objects that are
responsible for submitting various SQL statements to a database server. There
are several cursor classes in MySQLdb.cursors:
1. BaseCursor is the base class for Cursor objects.
2. Cursor is the default cursor
class. CursorWarningMixIn, CursorStoreResultMixIn, CursorTupleRo
wsMixIn, and BaseCursor are some components of the cursor class.
3. CursorStoreResultMixIn uses the mysql_store_result() function to
retrieve result sets from the executed query. These result sets are
stored at the client side.
4. CursorUseResultMixIn uses the mysql_use_result() function to
retrieve result sets from the executed query. These result sets are
stored at the server side.
The following example illustrates the execution of SQL commands using cursor
objects. You can use execute to execute SQL commands like SELECT. To
commit all SQL operations you need to close the cursor as cursor.close().

>>>cursor.execute('SELECT * FROM books')

>>>cursor.execute('''SELECT * FROM books WHERE book_name = 'python'
AND book_author = 'Mark Lutz' )

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>>>cursor.close()

These objects represent a database cursor, which is used to manage the

context of a fetch operation.
Cursors created from the same connection are not isolated, i.e., any changes
done to the database by a cursor are immediately visible by the other cursors.
Cursors created from different connections can or cannot be isolated,
depending on how the transaction support is implemented.
Cursor Attributes
Cursor Objects should respond to the following methods and attributes.

This read-only attribute is a sequence of 7-item sequences. Each of these

sequences contains information describing one result column:
● name
● type_code
● display_size
● internal_size
● precision
● scale
● null_ok

The first two items (name and type_code) are mandatory, the other five are
optional and are set to None if no meaningful values can be provided.
Cursor Methods
This method is optional since not all databases provide stored procedures.
.callproc(procname [, parameters ]): It calls a stored database procedure with
the given name. The sequence of parameters must contain one entry for each
argument that the procedure expects.
.close(): Close the cursor now. The cursor will be unusable from this point
forward; an Error (or subclass) exception will be raised if any operation is
attempted with the cursor.

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.execute(operation [, parameters]): Prepare and execute a database operation

(query or command). Parameters may be provided as sequence or mapping and
will be bound to variables in the operation.
.fetchall(): Fetch all (remaining) rows of a query result, returning them as a
sequence of sequences (e.g. a list of tuples). Note that the cursor’s arraysize
attribute can affect the performance of this operation. An Error (or subclass)
exception is raised if the previous call to .execute*() did not produce any result
set or no call was issued yet.
.nextset(): This method will make the cursor skip to the next available set,
discarding any remaining rows from the current set. If there are no more sets,
the method returns None. Otherwise, it returns a true value, and subsequent
calls to the .fetch*() methods will return rows from the next result set.

Error and exception handling in DB-API

Exception handling is very easy in the Python DB-API module. We can place
warnings and error handling messages in the programs. Python DB-API has
various options to handle this,
like Warning, InterfaceError, DatabaseError, IntegrityError, InternalError, NotS
upportedError, OperationalError and ProgrammingError.
Let’s take a look at them one by one:
1. IntegrityError: Let’s look at integrity error in detail. In the following
example, we will try to enter duplicate records in the database. It will
show an integrity error, _mysql_exceptions.IntegrityError, as shown
below:

2. >>> cursor.execute('insert books values

(%s,%s,%s,%s)',('Py9098','Programming With Perl',120,100))
3. Traceback (most recent call last):
4. File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
5. File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line
95, in execute
6. return self._execute(query, args)
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7. File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line

114, in _execute
8. self.errorhandler(self, exc, value)
9. raise errorclass, errorvalue

_mysql_exceptions.IntegrityError: (1062, "Duplicate entry 'Py9098' for

key 1")

1. OperationalError: If there are any operation errors like no databases

selected, Python DB-API will handle this error as OperationalError,
shown below:

2. >>> cursor.execute('Create database Library')

3. >>> q='select name from books where cost>=%s order by name'
4. >>>cursor.execute(q,[50])
5. Traceback (most recent call last):
6. File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
7. File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line
95, in execute
8. return self._execute(query, args)
9. File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line
114, in _execute
10. self.errorhandler(self, exc, value)
11. File
"/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/MySQLdb/connections.py", line
33, in defaulterrorhandler

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12. raise errorclass, errorvalue

_mysql_exceptions.OperationalError: (1046, 'No Database Selected')

13. ProgrammingError: If there are any programming errors like
duplicate database creations, Python DB-API will handle this error
as ProgrammingError, shown below:

14. >>> cursor.execute('Create database Library')

15. Traceback (most recent call last):>>> cursor.execute('Create
database Library')
16. Traceback (most recent call last):
17. File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
18. File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/MySQLdb/cursors.py",
line 95, in execute
19. return self._execute(query, args)
20. File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/MySQLdb/cursors.py",
line 114, in _execute
21. self.errorhandler(self, exc, value)
22. File
"/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/MySQLdb/connections.py", line
33, in defaulterrorhandler
23. raise errorclass, errorvalue

_mysql_exceptions.ProgrammingError: (1007, "Can't create database

'Library'. Database exist

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Python and MySQL

Python and MySQL are a good combination to develop database applications.
After starting the MySQL service on Linux, you need to acquire MySQLdb, a
Python DB-API for MySQL to perform database operations. You can check
whether the MySQLdb module is installed in your system with the following
command:

>>>import MySQLdb
If this command runs successfully, you can now start writing scripts for your
database.
To write database applications in Python, there are five steps to follow:
1. Import the SQL interface with the following command:

>>> import MySQLdb

2. Establish a connection with the database with the following command:

>>> conn=MySQLdb.connect(host='localhost',user='root',passwd='')
…where host is the name of your host machine, followed by the
username and password. In case of the root, there is no need to
provide a password.
3. Create a cursor for the connection with the following command:

>>>cursor = conn.cursor()
4. Execute any SQL query using this cursor as shown below—here the
outputs in terms of 1L or 2L show a number of rows affected by this
query:
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5. >>> cursor.execute('Create database Library')

6. 1L // 1L Indicates how many rows affected
7. >>> cursor.execute('use Library')
8. >>>table='create table books(book_accno char(30) primary key,
book_name
9. char(50),no_of_copies int(5),price int(5))'
10. >>> cursor.execute(table)

0L
11. Finally, fetch the result set and iterate over this result set. In this
step, the user can fetch the result sets as shown below:

12. >>> cursor.execute('select * from books')

13. 2L
14. >>> cursor.fetchall()

(('Py9098', 'Programming With Python', 100L, 50L), ('Py9099',

'Programming With Python', 100L, 50L))
In this example, the fetchall() function is used to fetch the result sets.

More SQL operations

We can perform all SQL operations with Python DB-API. Insert, delete,
aggregate and update queries can be illustrated as follows.
1. Insert SQL Query

2. >>>cursor.execute('insert books values

(%s,%s,%s,%s)',('Py9098','Programming With Python',100,50))
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3. lL // Rows affected.
4. >>> cursor.execute('insert books values
(%s,%s,%s,%s)',('Py9099','Programming With Python',100,50))

1L //Rows affected.
If the user wants to insert duplicate entries for a book’s accession
number, the Python DB-API will show an error as it is the primary
key. The following example illustrates this:

>>> cursor.execute('insert books values

(%s,%s,%s,%s)',('Py9099','Programming With Python',100,50))
>>>cursor.execute('insert books values
(%s,%s,%s,%s)',('Py9098','Programming With Perl',120,100))
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line
95, in execute
return self._execute(query, args)
File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line
114, in _execute
self.errorhandler(self, exc, value)
File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/MySQLdb/connections.py",
line 33, in defaulterrorhandler
raise errorclass, errorvalue
_mysql_exceptions.IntegrityError: (1062, "Duplicate entry 'Py9098' for
key 1")

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5. The Update SQL query can be used to update existing records in the
database as shown below:

6. >>> cursor.execute('update books set price=%s where

no_of_copies<=%s',[60,101])
7. 2L
8. >>> cursor.execute('select * from books')
9. 2L
10. >>> cursor.fetchall()

(('Py9098', 'Programming With Python', 100L, 60L), ('Py9099',

'Programming With Python', 100L, 60L))
11. The Delete SQL query can be used to delete existing records in the
database as shown below:

12. >>> cursor.execute('delete from books where

no_of_copies<=%s',[101])
13. 2L
14. >>> cursor.execute('select * from books')
15. 0L
16. >>> cursor.fetchall()
17. ()
18.
19. >>> cursor.execute('select * from books')
20. 3L

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>>> cursor.fetchall() (('Py9099', 'Python-Cookbook', 200L, 90L),

('Py9098', 'Programming With Python', 100L, 50L), ('Py9097',
'Python-Nut shell', 300L, 80L))
21. Aggregate functions can be used with Python DB-API in the
database as shown below:

22. >>> cursor.execute('select * from books')

23. 4L
24. >>> cursor.fetchall()
25. (('Py9099', 'Python-Cookbook', 200L, 90L), ('Py9098', 'Programming
With Python', 100L, 50L), ('Py9097', 'Python-Nut shell', 300L, 80L),
('Py9096', 'Python-Nut shell', 400L, 90L))
26. >>> cursor.execute("select sum(price),avg(price) from books where
book_name='Python-Nut shell'")
27. 1L
28. >>> cursor.fetchall()

((170.0, 85.0),)

DB-API Module Attributes

Attribute Description Attribute Description

apilevel Version of DB-API module is compliant
with
threadsafety Level of thread safety of this module
paramstyle SQL statement parameter style of this
module
Connect() Connect() function
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Data Attributes

apilevel
This string (not float) indicates the highest version of the DB-API the module is
compliantwith,i.e.,"1.0", "2.0", etc. If absent,"1.0" should be assumed as the
default value.
Threadsafety

This an integer with these possible values:

●0: Not threadsafe, so threads should not share the module at all
●1: Minimally threadsafe: threads can share the module but not connections
●2: Moderately threadsafe: threads can share the module and connections but
Notcursors
●3: Fully threadsafe: threads can share the module, connections, and cursors
Paramstyle

The API supports a variety of ways to indicate how parameters should be

integrated into an SQL statement that is eventually sent to the server for
execution.
paramstyle Database Parameter Styles
Parameter Style Description Example
numeric Numeric positional style WHERE name=:1
named Named style WHERE name=:name
Python dictionary
pyformat printf() format pyformat
conversion WHERE
name=%(name)s
qmark Question mark style WHERE name=?
format ANSI C printf() format WHERE name=%s
conversion

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Function Attribute(s)

connect() Function access to the database is made available through

Connection objects. A compliant module has to implement a connect() function,
which creates and returns a Connection object.
1. connect() Function Attributes
By using connect() function database connection information as a string with
multiple parameters (DSN) or individual parameters passed as positional
arguments (if you know the exact order),or more likely, keyword arguments.
Here is an example of using connect()
connect(dsn='myhost:MYDB',user='guido',password='234$')

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