Python MySQLdb TypeError: not all arguments converted during string formatting

Question

Upon running this script:

#! /usr/bin/env python import MySQLdb as mdb import sys      class Test:     def check(self, search):         try:             con = mdb.connect('localhost', 'root', 'password', 'recordsdb');              cur = con.cursor()             cur.execute( "SELECT * FROM records WHERE email LIKE '%s'", search )              ver = cur.fetchone()              print "Output : %s " % ver          except mdb.Error, e:              print "Error %d: %s" % (e.args[0],e.args[1])             sys.exit(1)          finally:                 if con:                     con.close()  test = Test() test.check("test") 

I get an error of:

./lookup  Traceback (most recent call last):   File "./lookup", line 27, in <module>     test.check("test")   File "./lookup", line 11, in creep     cur.execute( "SELECT * FROM records WHERE email LIKE '%s'", search )   File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line 187, in execute     query = query % tuple([db.literal(item) for item in args]) TypeError: not all arguments converted during string formatting 

I have zero idea why. I'm trying to do parameterized querys, but it's been nothing but a pain. I'm somewhat new to Python, so it's probably an obvious problem.

Answer 1

Instead of this:

cur.execute( "SELECT * FROM records WHERE email LIKE '%s'", search ) 

Try this:

cur.execute( "SELECT * FROM records WHERE email LIKE %s", [search] ) 

See the MySQLdb documentation. The reasoning is that execute's second parameter represents a list of the objects to be converted, because you could have an arbitrary number of objects in a parameterized query. In this case, you have only one, but it still needs to be an iterable (a tuple instead of a list would also be fine).