Can you copy/move data between columns in a DB migration file?

Question

I have a SqlAlchemy/Flask application. In it, I have an existing model named MyModelA. This is what it looks like:

class MyModelA(db.Model):
    a_id   = db.Column(db.Integer, nullable=False, primary_key=True)
    my_field1 = db.Column(db.String(1024), nullable=True)

Now, I am adding a child model MyModelB. This is what it looks like:

class MyModelB(db.Model):
    b_id   = db.Column(db.Integer, nullable=False, primary_key=True)
    a_id = db.Column(db.Integer, db.ForeignKey(MyModelA.a_id), nullable=False)
    my_field2 = db.Column(db.String(1024), nullable=True)

Then I run python manage.py migrate. This is what shows up in the migration file:

def upgrade():
    op.create_table('my_model_b',
    sa.Column('b_id', sa.Integer(), nullable=False),
    sa.Column('a_id', sa.Integer(), nullable=False),
    sa.Column('my_field2', sa.String(length=1024), nullable=True),
    sa.ForeignKeyConstraint(['a_id'], [u'my_model_a.a_id'], ),
    sa.PrimaryKeyConstraint('b_id')
    )

def downgrade():
    op.drop_table('my_table_b')

I want to edit this migration such that it for every instance of MyModelA, a child record of instance MyModelB should be created with MyModelB.my_field2 set to MyModelA.my_field1. How can I do it?

Please show the code for upgrade and downgrade.

Answer 1

Edit:

You can do something like this for the one time migration:

db.engine.execute("INSERT INTO model_b (a_id) select a_id from model_a");

of if you really want sqlalschemy code:

for model in db.query(ModelA).all()
    db.session.add(ModelB(a_id=model.id))
db.session.commit()

Previous answer:

What you are describing is not something you typically do in migrations. Migrations change/create the structure of your database. If you need it to happen every time a new MyModelA is created, this sounds more like events: http://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/latest/orm/events.html#session-events

class MyModelA(db.Model):
    ...


@sqlalchemy.event.listens_for(SignallingSession, 'before_flush')
def insert_model_b(session, transaction, instances):
    for instance in session.new:
        if isinstance(instance, MyModelA):
            model_b = MyModelB(a=instance)
            session.add(model_b)

Also, your schema needs to show that relationship (not just the foreign key) so you can assign the yet uninserted model_a to model_b.a:

class MyModelB(db.Model):
    b_id   = db.Column(db.Integer, nullable=False, primary_key=True)
    a_id = db.Column(db.Integer, db.ForeignKey(MyModelA.a_id), nullable=False)
    a = relationship("MyModelA")
    my_field2 = db.Column(db.String(1024), nullable=True)

Full code example:

import sqlalchemy
from sqlalchemy.orm import relationship
from flask import Flask
from flask.ext.sqlalchemy import SQLAlchemy
from flask.ext.sqlalchemy import SignallingSession

app = Flask(__name__)
app.config['SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI'] = 'sqlite:///:memory:'
app.config['SQLALCHEMY_ECHO'] = True

db = SQLAlchemy(app)

class MyModelA(db.Model):
    __tablename__ = 'model_a'
    a_id = db.Column(db.Integer, nullable=False, primary_key=True)
    my_field1 = db.Column(db.String(1024), nullable=True)

class MyModelB(db.Model):
    __tablename__ = 'model_b'

    b_id = db.Column(db.Integer, nullable=False, primary_key=True)
    a_id = db.Column(db.Integer, db.ForeignKey(MyModelA.a_id), nullable=False)
    a = relationship(MyModelA)
    my_field2 = db.Column(db.String(1024), nullable=True)


@sqlalchemy.event.listens_for(SignallingSession, 'before_flush')
def insert_model_b(session, transaction, instances):
    for instance in session.new:
        if isinstance(instance, MyModelA):
            model_b = MyModelB(a=instance)
            session.add(model_b)

db.create_all()
model_a = MyModelA()
db.session.add(model_a)
db.session.commit()