Bulk saving complex objects SQLAlchemy

Question

association_table = Table("association_table",
                          Base.metadata,
                          Column("show_id", Integer(), ForeignKey("show_times.id"), primary_key=True),
                          Column("theater_id", Integer(), ForeignKey("theaters.id")))

association_table2 = Table("association_table2",
                           Base.metadata,
                           Column("show_id", Integer(), ForeignKey("show_times.id"), primary_key=True),
                           Column("movie_id", Integer(), ForeignKey("movies.id")))



class Movie(Base):
    __tablename__ = "movies"
    id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
    title = Column(String(), unique=True)
    plot = Column(String())
    duration = Column(String())
    rating = Column(String())
    trailer = Column(String())
    imdb = Column(String())
    poster = Column(String())
    summary = Column(String())

class Theater(Base):
    __tablename__ = "theaters"
    id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
    zip_code = Column(String())
    city = Column(String())
    state = Column(String())
    address = Column(String())
    phone_number = Column(String())


class Showtime(Base):
    __tablename__ = "show_times"
    id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
    date = Column(Date())
    theaterz = relationship("Theater", secondary=association_table)
    moviez = relationship("Movie", secondary=association_table2)
    showtimes = Column(String())

supposing we have movie objects:

movie_1 = Movie(title="Cap Murica",
              plot="Cap punches his way to freedom",
              duration="2 hours")

movie_2 = Movie(title="Cap Murica 22222",
              plot="Cap punches his way to freedom again",
              duration="2 hours")

and a theater object:

theater = Theater(name="Regal Cinemas",
                  zip_code="00000",
                  city="Houston",
                  state="TX")

how do we bulk save this into the show_times Model?

I've tried doing this:

movies = [movie_1, movie_2] # these movie objects are from the code snippet above

show_times = Showtime(date="5/19/2016",
                      theaterz=[theater],
                      moviez=movies)
session.add(show_times)
session.commit()

hurray the above works. but when i do it in bulk like this:

showtime_lists = [show_time1, show_time2, showtime3] # these are basically just the same show time objects as above

session.bulk_save_objects(showtime_lists)
session.commit()

it doesn't fail but the data also doesn't get persisted to the database.

I mean is there an alternative to adding each show_time to the session individually? A bulk insert would be better but I don't get why the data doesn't get persisted if done that way.

Answer 1

Session.bulk_save_objects() is too low level API for your use case, which is persisting multiple model objects and their relationships. The documentation is clear on this:

Warning

The bulk save feature allows for a lower-latency INSERT/UPDATE of rows at the expense of most other unit-of-work features. Features such as object management, relationship handling, and SQL clause support are silently omitted in favor of raw INSERT/UPDATES of records.

Please read the list of caveats at Bulk Operations before using this method, and fully test and confirm the functionality of all code developed using these systems.

You should use Session.add_all() to add a collection of instances to the session. It will handle the instances one at a time, but that is the price you have to pay for advanced features such as relationship handling.

So, instead of

session.bulk_save_objects(showtime_lists)
session.commit()

do

session.add_all(showtime_lists)
session.commit()