Pythonic way to create a long multi-line string

Question

I have a very long query. I would like to split it in several lines in Python. A way to do it in JavaScript would be using several sentences and joining them with a +<

Answer 1

This approach uses:

• just one backslash to avoid an initial linefeed
• almost no internal punctuation by using a triple quoted string
• strips away local indentation using the textwrap inspect module
• uses python 3.6 formatted string interpolation ('f') for the account_id and def_id variables.

This way looks the most pythonic to me.

# import textwrap  # See update to answer below
import inspect

# query = textwrap.dedent(f'''\
query = inspect.cleandoc(f'''
    SELECT action.descr as "action", 
    role.id as role_id,
    role.descr as role
    FROM 
    public.role_action_def,
    public.role,
    public.record_def, 
    public.action
    WHERE role.id = role_action_def.role_id AND
    record_def.id = role_action_def.def_id AND
    action.id = role_action_def.action_id AND
    role_action_def.account_id = {account_id} AND
    record_def.account_id={account_id} AND
    def_id={def_id}'''
)

Update: 1/29/2019 Incorporate @ShadowRanger's suggestion to use inspect.cleandoc instead of textwrap.dedent