sqlalchemy.types.TypeEngine

Produce an "adapted" form of this type, given an "impl" class to work with.

This method is used internally to associate generic types with "implementation" types that are specific to a particular dialect.

Return an instance of the generic type corresponding to this type using heuristic rule. The method may be overridden if this heuristic rule is not sufficient.

>>> from sqlalchemy.dialects.mysql import INTEGER
>>> INTEGER(display_width=4).as_generic()
Integer()

>>> from sqlalchemy.dialects.mysql import NVARCHAR
>>> NVARCHAR(length=100).as_generic()
Unicode(length=100)

Given a bind value (i.e. a .BindParameter instance), return a SQL expression in its place.

This is typically a SQL function that wraps the existing bound parameter within the statement. It is used for special data types that require literals being wrapped in some special database function in order to coerce an application-level value into a database-specific format. It is the SQL analogue of the .TypeEngine.bind_processor method.

This method is called during the SQL compilation phase of a statement, when rendering a SQL string. It is not called against specific values.

Note that this method, when implemented, should always return the exact same structure, without any conditional logic, as it may be used in an executemany() call against an arbitrary number of bound parameter sets.

Return a conversion function for processing bind values.

Returns a callable which will receive a bind parameter value as the sole positional argument and will return a value to send to the DB-API.

If processing is not necessary, the method should return None.

Suggest a type for a 'coerced' Python value in an expression.

Given an operator and value, gives the type a chance to return a type which the value should be coerced into.

The default behavior here is conservative; if the right-hand side is already coerced into a SQL type based on its Python type, it is usually left alone.

End-user functionality extension here should generally be via .TypeDecorator, which provides more liberal behavior in that it defaults to coercing the other side of the expression into this type, thus applying special Python conversions above and beyond those needed by the DBAPI to both ides. It also provides the public method .TypeDecorator.coerce_compared_value which is intended for end-user customization of this behavior.

Given a SELECT column expression, return a wrapping SQL expression.

This is typically a SQL function that wraps a column expression as rendered in the columns clause of a SELECT statement. It is used for special data types that require columns to be wrapped in some special database function in order to coerce the value before being sent back to the application. It is the SQL analogue of the .TypeEngine.result_processor method.

This method is called during the SQL compilation phase of a statement, when rendering a SQL string. It is not called against specific values.

Compare this type against the given backend type.

This function is currently not implemented for SQLAlchemy types, and for all built in types will return None. However, it can be implemented by a user-defined type where it can be consumed by schema comparison tools such as Alembic autogenerate.

A future release of SQLAlchemy will potentially implement this method for builtin types as well.

The function should return True if this type is equivalent to the given type; the type is typically reflected from the database so should be database specific. The dialect in use is also passed. It can also return False to assert that the type is not equivalent.

Produce a string-compiled form of this .TypeEngine.

When called with no arguments, uses a "default" dialect to produce a string result.

Return a copy of this type which has the .should_evaluate_none flag set to True.

E.g.:

Table(
    'some_table', metadata,
    Column(
        String(50).evaluates_none(),
        nullable=True,
        server_default='no value')
)

The ORM uses this flag to indicate that a positive value of None is passed to the column in an INSERT statement, rather than omitting the column from the INSERT statement which has the effect of firing off column-level defaults. It also allows for types which have special behavior associated with the Python None value to indicate that the value doesn't necessarily translate into SQL NULL; a prime example of this is a JSON type which may wish to persist the JSON value 'null'.

In all cases, the actual NULL SQL value can be always be persisted in any column by using the _expression.null SQL construct in an INSERT statement or associated with an ORM-mapped attribute.

Return the corresponding type object from the underlying DB-API, if any.

This can be useful for calling setinputsizes(), for example.

Return a conversion function for processing literal values that are to be rendered directly without using binds.

This function is used when the compiler makes use of the "literal_binds" flag, typically used in DDL generation as well as in certain scenarios where backends don't accept bound parameters.

Returns a callable which will receive a literal Python value as the sole positional argument and will return a string representation to be rendered in a SQL statement.

Return a conversion function for processing result row values.

Returns a callable which will receive a result row column value as the sole positional argument and will return a value to return to the user.

If processing is not necessary, the method should return None.

Produce a new type object that will utilize the given type when applied to the dialect of the given name.

e.g.:

from sqlalchemy.types import String
from sqlalchemy.dialects import mysql

s = String()

s = s.with_variant(mysql.VARCHAR(collation='foo'), 'mysql')

The construction of .TypeEngine.with_variant is always from the "fallback" type to that which is dialect specific. The returned type is an instance of .Variant, which itself provides a .Variant.with_variant that can be called repeatedly.