How to use python mysqldb to insert many rows at once

Question

I have a list of lists, e.g [['a','b'],['c','d']].

I have a table called T and two fields F1, F2. The first item in the field list maps to F1, second to F2.

How can I insert rows for each inner list in a single command or call, rather than using a for loop like this?

for i in [['a','b'],['c','d']]:     c.execute("insert into T (F1,F2) values (%s, %s)", (i[0], i[1])) 

Answer 1

From MySQLdb User's Guide:

c.executemany(       """INSERT INTO breakfast (name, spam, eggs, sausage, price)       VALUES (%s, %s, %s, %s, %s)""",       [       ("Spam and Sausage Lover's Plate", 5, 1, 8, 7.95 ),       ("Not So Much Spam Plate", 3, 2, 0, 3.95 ),       ("Don't Wany ANY SPAM! Plate", 0, 4, 3, 5.95 )       ] ) 

so in your case:

c.executemany("insert into T (F1,F2) values (%s, %s)",     [('a','b'),('c','d')]) 

Answer 2

It's possible to insert all rows in one single statement like @adamhajari, and avoid sql injections like @zenpoy, at the same time. You just need to create a big insert statement and let mysqldb's execute do the formatting.

values_to_insert = [('a','b'),('c','d')] query = "INSERT INTO T (F1, F2) VALUES " + ",".join("(%s, %s)" for _ in values_to_insert) flattened_values = [item for sublist in values_to_insert for item in sublist] c.execute(query, flattened_values) 

Not super readable, but can be slightly faster than executemany (I tried inserting batches of 50000 rows in a local DB, executemany was 20% slower).