Defining SQL Queries

Query Names

Name definitions are how aiosql determines the name of the methods that SQL code blocks are accessible by. A query name is defined by a SQL comment of the form “– name: “. As a readability convenience, dash characters (-) in the name are turned into underlines (_).

-- name: get-all-blogs
select * from blogs;

This query will be available in aiosql under the python method name .get_all_blogs(conn)

Query Comments

./sql/blogs.sql

-- name: get-all-blogs
-- Fetch all fields for every blog in the database.
select * from blogs;

Any other SQL comments you make between the name definition and your code will be used a the python documentation string for the generated method. You can use help() in the Python REPL to view these comments while using python.

Python 3.8.3 (default, May 17 2020, 18:15:42)
[GCC 10.1.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import aiosql
>>> queries = aiosql.from_path("sql", "sqlite3")
>>> help(queries.get_all_blogs)
Help on method get_all_blogs in module aiosql.queries:

get_all_blogs(conn, *args, **kwargs) method of aiosql.queries.Queries instance
    Fetch all fields for every blog in the database.

Operators

This section describes the usage of various query operator symbols that you can annotate query names with in order to direct how aiosql will execute and return results.

No Operator (Default)

In the above Query Names section the get-all-blogs name is written without any trailing operators.

-- name: get-all-blogs

The lack of an operator is actually the most basic operator used by default for your queries. This tells aiosql to execute the query and to return all the results. In the case of get-all-blogs that means a select statement will be executed and a list of rows will be returned. When writing your application you will often need to perform other operations besides select, like insert, delete, and perhaps bulk operations. The operators detailed in the other sections of this doc let you declare in your SQL code how that query should be executed by a python database driver.

`^` Select One

The ^ operator executes a query and returns the first row of a result set. When there are no rows in the result set it returns None. This is useful when you know there should be one, and exactly one result from your query.

As an example, if you have a unique constraint on the username field in your users table which makes it impossible for two users to share the same username, you could use ^ to direct aiosql to select a single user rather than a list of rows of length 1.

-- name: get_user_by_username^
select userid,
       username,
       name
  from users
 where username = :username;

When used from Python this query will either return None or the singular selected row.

queries.get_user_by_username(conn, username="willvaughn")
# => (1, "willvaughn", "William Vaughn") or None

`$` Select Value

The $ operator will execute the query, and only return the first value of the first row of a result set. If there are no rows in the result set it returns None. This is implemented by returing the first element of the tuple returned by cur.fetchone() from the underlying driver. This is mostly useful for queries returning IDs, COUNTs or other aggregates.

-- name: get-count$
select count(*) from users

When used from Python:

queries.get_count(conn)
# => 3

`!` Insert/Update/Delete

The ! operator executes SQL without returning any results. It is meant for statements that use insert, update, and delete to make modifications to database rows without a necessary return value.

-- name: publish_blog!
insert into blogs(userid, title, content) values (:userid, :title, :content);

-- name: remove_blog!
-- Remove a blog from the database
delete from blogs where blogid = :blogid;

The methods generated are:

publish_blog(conn, userid: int, title: str, content: str) -> int:
remove_blog(conn, blogid: int) -> int:

Each can be called to alter the database, and returns the number of affected rows if available.

`<!` Insert/Update/Delete Returning

When performing a modification of rows, or adding new rows, sometimes it is necessary to return values using the returning clause where available. With the <! operator aiosql can execute a query and return values.

When using SQLite this operator will return the id of the inserted row using `cur.lastrowid <https://docs.python.org/3/library/sqlite3.html#sqlite3.Cursor.lastrowid>`__.

-- name: publish_blog<!
insert into blogs(userid, title, content) values (:userid, :title, :content);

Executing this query in python will return the blogid of the inserted row.

queries = aiosql.from_path("blogs.sql", "sqlite3")
# ... connection code ...
blogid = queries.publish_blog(conn, userid=1, title="Hi", content="blah blah.")

PostgreSQL allows returning multiple values via the RETURNING clause of queries. This same query using psycopg or psycopg2 might look like the following.

-- name: publish_blog<!
insert into blogs(userid, title, content)
     values (:userid, :title, :content)
  returning blogid, title;

In python a tuple is returned with the blogid and title of the inserted row.

queries = aiosql.from_path("blogs.sql", "psycopg2")
# ... connection code ...
blogid, title = queries.publish_blog(conn, userid=1, title="Hi", content="blah blah.")

Note that INSERT … RETURNING basically behaves as a SELECT, so using ^ or $ would work as well.

`*!` Insert/Update/Delete Many

The *! operator directs aiosql to execute a SQL statement over all items of a given sequence. Under the hood this calls the executemany method of many database drivers. See sqlite3 Cursor.executemany for an example.

In aiosql we can use this for a bulk publish method that operates over a list of blog entries.

-- name: bulk_publish*!
-- Insert many blogs at once
insert into blogs (userid, title, content, published)
values (:userid, :title, :content, :published);

queries = aiosql.from_path("blogs.sql", "psycopg2")
# ... connection code ...
blogs = [
    {"userid": 1, "title": "First Blog", "content": "...", published: datetime(2018, 1, 1)},
    {"userid": 1, "title": "Next Blog", "content": "...", published: datetime(2018, 1, 2)},
    {"userid": 2, "title": "Hey, Hey!", "content": "...", published: datetime(2018, 7, 28)},
]
queries.bulk_publish(conn, blogs)

The methods returns the number of affected rows, if available.

`#` Execute Scripts

Using this operarator will execute sql statements as a script. You can’t do variable substitution with the # operator. An example usecase is using data definition statements like create table in order to setup a database.

-- name: create_schema#
create table users (
    userid integer not null primary key,
    username text not null,
    firstname integer not null,
    lastname text not null
);

create table blogs (
    blogid integer not null primary key,
    userid integer not null,
    title text not null,
    content text not null,
    published date not null default CURRENT_DATE,
    foreign key(userid) references users(userid)
);

queries = aiosql.from_path("create_schema.sql", "sqlite3")
# ... connection code ...
queries.create_schema(conn)

Defining SQL Queries

Query Names

Query Comments

Operators

No Operator (Default)

^ Select One

$ Select Value

! Insert/Update/Delete

<! Insert/Update/Delete Returning

*! Insert/Update/Delete Many

# Execute Scripts