Connecting to MSSQL in Flask using Flask-SQLAlchemy and pyodbc

Question

I am not able to connect to MSSQL Server 2016 database using Flask-SQLALchemy and pyodbc. I have searched through Google and none of the solutions work.

I am getting the following error:

sqlalchemy.exc.InterfaceError: (pyodbc.InterfaceError) ('IM002', u'[IM002] [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source name not found and no default driver specified (0) (SQLDriverConnect)')

My current local environment is:

• Windows 7 Professional
• Python 2.7

I am able to connect to the database with just pyodbc and no Flask.

import pyodbc
server = '<server>'
database = '<database>'
username = '<username>'
password = '<password>'
cnxn = pyodbc.connect('DRIVER={ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server};SERVER='+server+';PORT=1443;DATABASE='+database+';UID='+username+';PWD='+ password)
cursor = cnxn.cursor()

#Select Query
print ('Reading data from table')
tsql = "SELECT DISTINCT TOP 10 * FROM dbo.Test;"
with cursor.execute(tsql):
    row = cursor.fetchone()
    while row:
        print (str(row[0]) + " " + str(row[1]))
        row = cursor.fetchone()

Application Code Snippets

config.py

SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI = mssql+pyodbc:///?odbc_connect="DRIVER={ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server};SERVER=<server>;DATABASE=<database>;UID=<username>;PWD=<password>
SQLALCHEMY_TRACK_MODIFICATIONS = False

__init__.py

import os
from flask import Flask
from flask_sqlalchemy import SQLAlchemy
from flask_migrate import Migrate
from config import Config

db = SQLAlchemy()
migrate = Migrate()

def create_app(config_class=Config):
    app = Flask(__name__)
    app.config.from_object(config_class)

    db.init_app(app)
    migrate.init_app(app, db)

    from app.errors import bp as errors_bp
    app.register_blueprint(errors_bp)

    from app.main import bp as main_bp
    app.register_blueprint(main_bp)

    return app

from app import models

Answer 1

This should work as your SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI connection value:

mssql://user:pwd!@PATH_TO_MSSQL_LOCATION?driver=SQL+Server+Native+Client+11.0

You might need to experiment with different version numbers up and down, although the version of the native driver is probably ascertainable.