How do you talk with your relational database?

Databases are the core of storing state for almost all web applications. For that reason taking care of the interactions with the database is crucial to make sure the application keeps running. The way to interact with most relational databases is SQL — the Structured Query Language. SQL makes it incredibly simple to switch the actual database system or the client using that database. It’s just SQL everywhere. You need a database driver and then you can do the typical CRUD interactions: Create, Read, Update and Delete data.

After reading this article, you will know when to use raw SQL, a query builder and an ORM. You will also know how to use each of them in Python.

All of the code in this article is runnable. You just need to initialize the database and add environment variables. I use direnv to set environment variables:

# direnv needed; alternatively: "source .envrc"
export DB_USER=root
export DB_PASSWORD=idontthinkso

#sql #database #python #web-development #developer