Release: 1.0.14 | Release Date: July 6, 2016

# SQLAlchemy 1.0 Documentation

# Connections / Engines

- How do I configure logging?
- How do I pool database connections? Are my connections pooled?
- How do I pass custom connect arguments to my database API?
- “MySQL Server has gone away”
- Why does SQLAlchemy issue so many ROLLBACKs?
  - I’m on MyISAM - how do I turn it off?
  - I’m on SQL Server - how do I turn those ROLLBACKs into COMMITs?
- I am using multiple connections with a SQLite database (typically to test transaction operation), and my test program is not working!
- How do I get at the raw DBAPI connection when using an Engine?
- How do I use engines / connections / sessions with Python multiprocessing, or os.fork()?

## How do I configure logging?

See Configuring Logging.

## How do I pool database connections? Are my connections pooled?

SQLAlchemy performs application-level connection pooling automatically in most cases. With the exception of SQLite, a `Engine` object refers to a `QueuePool` as a source of connectivity.

For more detail, see Engine Configuration and Connection Pooling.

## How do I pass custom connect arguments to my database API?

The `create_engine()` call accepts additional arguments either directly via the `connect_args` keyword argument:

    e = create_engine("mysql://scott:tiger@localhost/test",
                        connect_args={"encoding": "utf8"})

Or for basic string and integer arguments, they can usually be specified in the query string of the URL:

    e = create_engine("mysql://scott:tiger@localhost/test?encoding=utf8")

See also

Custom DBAPI connect() arguments

## “MySQL Server has gone away”

There are two major causes for this error:

1. The MySQL client closes connections which have been idle for a set period of time, defaulting to eight hours. This can be avoided by using the `pool_recycle` setting with `create_engine()`, described at Connection Timeouts.

2. Usage of the MySQLdb DBAPI, or a similar DBAPI, in a non-threadsafe manner, or in an otherwise inappropriate way. The MySQLdb connection object is not threadsafe - this expands out to any SQLAlchemy system that links to a single connection, which includes the ORM `Session`. For background on how `Session` should be used in a multithreaded environment, see Is the session thread-safe?.

## Why does SQLAlchemy issue so many ROLLBACKs?

SQLAlchemy currently assumes DBAPI connections are in “non-autocommit” mode - this is the default behavior of the Python database API, meaning it must be assumed that a transaction is always in progress. The connection pool issues `connection.rollback()` when a connection is returned. This is so that any transactional resources remaining on the connection are released. On a database like Postgresql or MSSQL where table resources are aggressively locked, this is critical so that rows and tables don’t remain locked within connections that are no longer in use. An application can otherwise hang. It’s not just for locks, however, and is equally critical on any database that has any kind of transaction isolation, including MySQL with InnoDB. Any connection that is still inside an old transaction will return stale data, if that data was already queried on that connection within isolation. For background on why you might see stale data even on MySQL, see http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/innodb-transaction-model.html

### I’m on MyISAM - how do I turn it off?

The behavior of the connection pool’s connection return behavior can be configured using `reset_on_return`:

    from sqlalchemy import create_engine
    from sqlalchemy.pool import QueuePool

    engine = create_engine('mysql://scott:tiger@localhost/myisam_database', pool=QueuePool(reset_on_return=False))

### I’m on SQL Server - how do I turn those ROLLBACKs into COMMITs?

`reset_on_return` accepts the values `commit`, `rollback` in addition to `True`, `False`, and `None`. Setting to `commit` will cause a COMMIT as any connection is returned to the pool:

    engine = create_engine('mssql://scott:tiger@mydsn', pool=QueuePool(reset_on_return='commit'))

## I am using multiple connections with a SQLite database (typically to test transaction operation), and my test program is not working!

If using a SQLite `:memory:` database, or a version of SQLAlchemy prior to version 0.7, the default connection pool is the `SingletonThreadPool`, which maintains exactly one SQLite connection per thread. So two connections in use in the same thread will actually be the same SQLite connection. Make sure you’re not using a :memory: database and use `NullPool`, which is the default for non-memory databases in current SQLAlchemy versions.

See also

Threading/Pooling Behavior - info on PySQLite’s behavior.

## How do I get at the raw DBAPI connection when using an Engine?

With a regular SA engine-level Connection, you can get at a pool-proxied version of the DBAPI connection via the `Connection.connection` attribute on `Connection`, and for the really-real DBAPI connection you can call the `ConnectionFairy.connection` attribute on that - but there should never be any need to access the non-pool-proxied DBAPI connection, as all methods are proxied through:

    engine = create_engine(...)
    conn = engine.connect()
    conn.connection.<do DBAPI things>
    cursor = conn.connection.cursor(<DBAPI specific arguments..>)

You must ensure that you revert any isolation level settings or other operation-specific settings on the connection back to normal before returning it to the pool.

As an alternative to reverting settings, you can call the `Connection.detach()` method on either `Connection` or the proxied connection, which will de-associate the connection from the pool such that it will be closed and discarded when `Connection.close()` is called:

    conn = engine.connect()
    conn.detach()  # detaches the DBAPI connection from the connection pool
    conn.connection.<go nuts>
    conn.close()  # connection is closed for real, the pool replaces it with a new connection

## How do I use engines / connections / sessions with Python multiprocessing, or os.fork()?

The key goal with multiple python processes is to prevent any database connections from being shared across processes. Depending on specifics of the driver and OS, the issues that arise here range from non-working connections to socket connections that are used by multiple processes concurrently, leading to broken messaging (the latter case is typically the most common).

The SQLAlchemy `Engine` object refers to a connection pool of existing database connections. So when this object is replicated to a child process, the goal is to ensure that no database connections are carried over. There are three general approaches to this:

1. Disable pooling using `NullPool`. This is the most simplistic, one shot system that prevents the `Engine` from using any connection more than once.

2. Call `Engine.dispose()` on any given `Engine` as soon one is within the new process. In Python multiprocessing, constructs such as `multiprocessing.Pool` include “initializer” hooks which are a place that this can be performed; otherwise at the top of where `os.fork()` or where the `Process` object begins the child fork, a single call to `Engine.dispose()` will ensure any remaining connections are flushed.

3. An event handler can be applied to the connection pool that tests for connections being shared across process boundaries, and invalidates them. This looks like the following:

       import os
       import warnings

       from sqlalchemy import event
       from sqlalchemy import exc

       def add_engine_pidguard(engine):
           """Add multiprocessing guards.

           Forces a connection to be reconnected if it is detected
           as having been shared to a sub-process.

           """

           @event.listens_for(engine, "connect")
           def connect(dbapi_connection, connection_record):
               connection_record.info['pid'] = os.getpid()

           @event.listens_for(engine, "checkout")
           def checkout(dbapi_connection, connection_record, connection_proxy):
               pid = os.getpid()
               if connection_record.info['pid'] != pid:
                   # substitute log.debug() or similar here as desired
                   warnings.warn(
                       "Parent process %(orig)s forked (%(newproc)s) with an open "
                       "database connection, "
                       "which is being discarded and recreated." %
                       {"newproc": pid, "orig": connection_record.info['pid']})
                   connection_record.connection = connection_proxy.connection = None
                   raise exc.DisconnectionError(
                       "Connection record belongs to pid %s, "
                       "attempting to check out in pid %s" %
                       (connection_record.info['pid'], pid)
                   )

   These events are applied to an `Engine` as soon as its created:

       engine = create_engine("...")

       add_engine_pidguard(engine)

The above strategies will accommodate the case of an `Engine` being shared among processes. However, for the case of a transaction-active `Session` or `Connection` being shared, there’s no automatic fix for this; an application needs to ensure a new child process only initiate new `Connection` objects and transactions, as well as ORM `Session` objects. For a `Session` object, technically this is only needed if the session is currently transaction-bound, however the scope of a single `Session` is in any case intended to be kept within a single call stack in any case (e.g. not a global object, not shared between processes or threads).