Re: Unpacking a Python list in a query.

Actually, a list or a tuple will work just fine.

>>> cursor.execute("UPDATE foobartable SET name = %s where name = %s;",
['Ham', 'HAM'])

>>> cursor.execute("UPDATE foobartable SET name = %s where name = %s;",
('Spam', 'SPAM'))

It's string interpolation (which you want to avoid in cursor.execute()) that
requires a list.

>>> '%s %s' % ('spam', 'eggs')
'spam eggs'

>>> '%s %s' % ['spam', 'eggs']
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<console>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: not enough arguments for format string

You can also use a dictionary.

>>> cursor.execute("UPDATE foobartable SET name = %(new_name)s where name
= %(old_name)s;", dict(new_name='Eggs', old_name='EGGS'))

--David

On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 2:25 PM, Israel Ben Guilherme Fonseca <
israel(dot)bgf(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> "UPDATE foobartable SET name = 'FooBar' WHERE name in (%s)"
>
> And pass your list as a parameter (it must be a tuple).
>
> execute("UPDATE foobartable SET name = 'FooBar' WHERE name in (%s)",
> (tuple(yourlist),))
>
> That should work.
>
>
> 2011/6/24 Sukhbir Singh <singheinstein(at)gmail(dot)com>
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am using the psycopg2 adapter on Python 2.6.
>>
>> There was a requirement to automate certain UPDATE queries, so I
>> designed the program in such a way that the end of the queries are in
>> a list. I will illustrate with an example.
>>
>> The query is:
>>
>> UPDATE foobartable SET name = 'FooBar' WHERE name = %s OR name = %s
>>
>> And say I have a list:
>>
>> ["Foo", "Bar"]
>>
>> So, I want to execute the complete query as: substituting element by
>> element from the list for each %s:
>>
>> UPDATE foobartable SET name = 'FooBar' WHERE name = 'Foo' OR name =
>> 'Bar'
>>
>> The question is: how do I pass this list to the query?
>>
>> I tried using the format method and list unpacking (*list) and it
>> works. But the docs recommend otherwise: "Warning Never, never, NEVER
>> use Python string concatenation (+) or string parameters interpolation
>> (%) to pass variables to a SQL query string. Not even at gunpoint"
>> This is what I did:
>>
>> curr.execute("UPDATE foobartable SET name='FooBar' WHERE
>> name='{0}' or name='{1}';".format(*list))
>>
>> ... which I am certain is wrong.
>>
>> How can I get this working with something safe and the recommended way
>> of doing it?
>>
>> --
>> Sukhbir.
>>
>> --
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>>
>
>