How to escape % in a query using python's sqlalchemy's execute() and pymysql?

Question

My query is:

result = connection.execute(          "select id_number from Table where string like '_stringStart%' limit 1;") 

gives the error:

query = query % escaped_args TypeError: not enough arguments for format string 

A quick google said to use %% instead of % but that doesn't work either. How do I escape the % or is there another way to query for a string that starts with a random letter then a certain sequence?

Answer 1

Since this is a literal string, you're better off using a bound parameter here (illustrated using text()):

from sqlalchemy import text  connection.execute(     text("select * from table where "          "string like :string limit 1"),      string="_stringStart%")