SQLAlchemy declarative: defining triggers and indexes (Postgres 9)

Question

Is there a way in the SQLAlchemy class of a table to define/create triggers and indexes for that table?

For instance if i had a basic table like ...

Answer 1

Indicies are straight-forward to create. For single-column with index=True parameter like below:

customer_code = Column(Unicode(15),unique=True,index=True)

But if you want more control over the name and options, use the explicit Index() construct:

Index('customers_search_vector_indx', Customer.__table__.c.search_vector, postgresql_using='gin')

Triggers can be created as well, but those need to still be SQL-based and hooked to the DDL events. See Customizing DDL for more info, but the code might look similar to this:

from sqlalchemy import event, DDL
trig_ddl = DDL("""
    CREATE TRIGGER customers_search_vector_update BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE
    ON customers
    FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE
    tsvector_update_trigger(search_vector,'pg_catalog.english',customer_code,customer_name);
""")
tbl = Customer.__table__
event.listen(tbl, 'after_create', trig_ddl.execute_if(dialect='postgresql'))

Sidenote: I do not know how to configure tsvector datatype: deserves a separate question.