How to tell if your select query is within a transaction or not?

Question

In Django 1.5.x, I have a long running management command where select queries are returning stale data. I suspect this is due to the fact that they are running within a transaction that are started earlier on the db connnection. Is there a way a tell if a query runs within a transaction or it is in autocommit mode?

(this is somewhat more focused version of an earlier question I posted at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18540099/orm-does-not-return-recent-database-changes)

Answer 1

Since Django 1.7, Connection.in_atomic_block will tell you if a connection is inside a transaction or not. It doesn't seem like this is documented, but it Works On My Machine:

from django.db import transaction
cxn = transaction.get_connection()
if cxn.in_atomic_block:
    print "We're inside a transaction!"

Answer 2

Since Django 1.6 you can tell if you're in autocommit mode via transaction.get_autocommit API.

from django.db import transaction

if transaction.get_autocommit():
    pass  # We are in autocommit