Python SQL query string formatting

Question

I\'m trying to find the best way to format an sql query string. When I\'m debugging my application I\'d like to log to file all the sql query strings, and it is important t

Answer 1

Cleanest way I have come across is inspired by the sql style guide.

sql = """
    SELECT field1, field2, field3, field4
      FROM table
     WHERE condition1 = 1
       AND condition2 = 2;
"""

Essentially, the keywords that begin a clause should be right-aligned and the field names etc, should be left aligned. This looks very neat and is easier to debug as well.

Answer 2

I would suggest sticking to option 2 (I'm always using it for queries any more complex than SELECT * FROM table) and if you want to print it in a nice way you may always use a separate module.

Answer 3

you could put the field names into an array "fields", and then:

sql = 'select %s from table where condition1=1 and condition2=2' % (
 ', '.join(fields))

Answer 4

Sorry for posting to such an old thread -- but as someone who also shares a passion for pythonic 'best', I thought I'd share our solution.

The solution is to build SQL statements using python's String Literal Concatenation (http://docs.python.org/), which could be qualified a somewhere between Option 2 and Option 4

Code Sample:

sql = ("SELECT field1, field2, field3, field4 "
       "FROM table "
       "WHERE condition1=1 "
       "AND condition2=2;")

Works as well with f-strings:

fields = "field1, field2, field3, field4"
table = "table"
conditions = "condition1=1 AND condition2=2"

sql = (f"SELECT {fields} "
       f"FROM {table} "
       f"WHERE {conditions};")

Pros:

1. It retains the pythonic 'well tabulated' format, but does not add extraneous space characters (which pollutes logging).
2. It avoids the backslash continuation ugliness of Option 4, which makes it difficult to add statements (not to mention white-space blindness).
3. And further, it's really simple to expand the statement in VIM (just position the cursor to the insert point, and press SHIFT-O to open a new line).

Answer 5

You can use inspect.cleandoc to nicely format your printed SQL statement.

This works very well with your option 2.

Note: the print("-"*40) is only to demonstrate the superflous blank lines if you do not use cleandoc.

from inspect import cleandoc
def query():
    sql = """
        select field1, field2, field3, field4
        from table
        where condition1=1
        and condition2=2
    """

    print("-"*40)
    print(sql)
    print("-"*40)
    print(cleandoc(sql))
    print("-"*40)

query()

Output:

----------------------------------------

        select field1, field2, field3, field4
        from table
        where condition1=1
        and condition2=2

----------------------------------------
select field1, field2, field3, field4
from table
where condition1=1
and condition2=2
----------------------------------------

From the docs:

inspect.cleandoc(doc)

Clean up indentation from docstrings that are indented to line up with blocks of code.

All leading whitespace is removed from the first line. Any leading whitespace that can be uniformly removed from the second line onwards is removed. Empty lines at the beginning and end are subsequently removed. Also, all tabs are expanded to spaces.

Answer 6

You've obviously considered lots of ways to write the SQL such that it prints out okay, but how about changing the 'print' statement you use for debug logging, rather than writing your SQL in ways you don't like? Using your favourite option above, how about a logging function such as this:

def debugLogSQL(sql):
     print ' '.join([line.strip() for line in sql.splitlines()]).strip()

sql = """
    select field1, field2, field3, field4
    from table"""
if debug:
    debugLogSQL(sql)

This would also make it trivial to add additional logic to split the logged string across multiple lines if the line is longer than your desired length.