asked on

Python mysqld format mapping error on insert

I am trying to insert values into a mysql table containing 75 fields; the python mysqldb syntax to insert those values without specifying the field names in the sql statement is needed (otherwise the insert statement would be very long!). I tried this:

my_dictionary = {'Local_Time':'Tuesday', 'Last_Name':'Smith', 'First_Name':'Sally', 'Middle_Name':'Jolie'}
    
    try:
	#use config.py to do this...
        con = mdb.connect('localhost', 'admin', 'password', 'db_name');

        with con:
            cursor = con.cursor()
	    
	    for field in my_dictionary:
		value = my_dictionary[field]
		sql = "INSERT into table_name (field) VALUES %(value)s" 
	    
            cursor.executemany(sql, my_dictionary)

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but when I execute this, the query error reads "TypeError: format requires a mapping"
What to do?

pepr

Peeping shortly to the doc, the .executemany does expect a list of tuples as the second argument, not the dictionary. The tuples in the list are the records to be inserted. You still need to supply the command template with that many of %s how many of columns you have (i.e. how many tuples). You also need to name the columns in the first part of the INSERT INTO.

However, if you have one record in a dict, it is possible to construct the string of the INSERT INTO command. Here with commented-out execution of the command:

my_dictionary = {'Local_Time':'Tuesday', 'Last_Name':'Smith', 'First_Name':'Sally', 'Middle_Name':'Jolie'}

sql_command = 'INSERT INTO table_name (' + ', '.join(my_dictionary.keys())        \
              + ') VALUES (' + ', '.join(repr(v) for v in my_dictionary.values()) \
              + ')'
   
print(sql_command)
   
#con = mdb.connect('localhost', 'admin', 'password', 'db_name');
#cursor = con.cursor()
#cursor.execute(sql_command)
#con.close()

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It prints on my console (manually reformated):

c:\__Python\sara_bellum\Q_28304887>a.py
INSERT INTO table_name (First_Name, Last_Name, Middle_Name, Local_Time) 
VALUES ('Sally', 'Smith', 'Jolie', 'Tuesday')

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sara_bellum

ASKER

Thanks Pepr I was astounded at how quickly I was able to get this working, all things considered. Your solution produced a substitution error on insert that I can't seem to find at the moment, but thanks to help you provided on this occasion and earlier I found that this works:

#user_data is the dictionary passed to the function
#form_list matches/orders the dictionary keys 
 value_list = [] 
 model, name = modelAndNameDictionaries(user_data)
 for i in form_list: 
	for k, v in model.items():    
	    if k == i:
		value_list.append(v)
	
 #format list values to build query    
 sql_1 = ', '.join(form_list)
 sql_2 = "','".join(value_list)    
 sql_cmd = ("INSERT INTO shc_students(" + sql_1 + ") VALUES ('" + sql_2 + "')")
 #print sql_cmd #verify syntax
    
  try:
        con = mdb.connect('localhost', 'username', 'password', 'dbname');
        with con:
            cursor = con.cursor()
	    cursor.execute(sql_cmd)

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I've been working other issues that I had hoped to fix by now but will close this out tomorrow or the next day. Happy Thanksgiving!!

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

pepr

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sara_bellum

ASKER

Thanks so much, I'm still figuring out how the model works. I used

v = model[i]

and fixed up the sql command like so:

sql_cmd = ("INSERT INTO shc_students(%s) VALUES ('%s')" % (cgi.escape( sql_1, True), (cgi.escape( sql_2, True))) )

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Spent much of the past few days patching up loop-from-hell errors, my code is too long. When I know more I'll rewrite this, but it works well enough for now.

Happy holidays :-)