single database connection throughout the python application (following singleton pattern)

Question

My Question is what is the best way to maintain the single database connection in the entire application? Using Singleton Pattern? How?

Conditions that are needed to be taken care of:

1. In case of multiple requests, I should be using the same connection
2. In case connection is closed, create a new connection
3. If the connection has timed-out, on new request my code should create a new connection.

---

The driver to my Database is not supported by the Django ORM. And due to same driver related issues, I am using pyodbc to connect to the database. Right now I am having below class for creating and managing the DB connections:

class DBConnection(object):
    def __init__(self, driver, serve,
                 database, user, password):

        self.driver = driver
        self.server = server
        self.database = database
        self.user = user
        self.password = password

    def __enter__(self):
        self.dbconn = pyodbc.connect("DRIVER={};".format(self.driver) +\
                                     "SERVER={};".format(self.server) +\
                                     "DATABASE={};".format(self.database) +\
                                     "UID={};".format(self.user) +\
                                     "PWD={};".format(self.password) + \
                                     "CHARSET=UTF8",
                                     # "",
                                     ansi=True)

        return self.dbconn

    def __exit__(self, exc_type, exc_val, exc_tb):
        self.dbconn.close()

But the issue with this approach is that it will create new database connection for each query. What will be the better way to do it following singleton pattern? The way I can think of will hold the reference to the connection if the connection is closed. Something like:

 def get_database_connection():
     conn = DBConnection.connection
     if not conn:
          conn = DBConnection.connection = DBConnection.create_connection()
     return conn

What will be the best way to achieve this? Any suggestion/ideas/examples?

PS: I was checking about using weakref which allows to create weak references to objects. I think it will be good idea to use weakref along with singleton pattern for storing the connection variable. This way I won't have to keep the connection alive when DB is not in use. What you guys say about this?

Answer 1

For now, I am going ahead with the singleton class approach. Anyone seeing the potential flaws in this, feel to mention them :)

DBConnector class for creating a connection

class DBConnector(object):

   def __init__(self, driver, server, database, user, password):

        self.driver = driver
        self.server = server
        self.database = database
        self.user = user
        self.password = password
        self.dbconn = None

    # creats new connection
    def create_connection(self):
        return pyodbc.connect("DRIVER={};".format(self.driver) + \
                              "SERVER={};".format(self.server) + \
                              "DATABASE={};".format(self.database) + \
                              "UID={};".format(self.user) + \
                              "PWD={};".format(self.password) + \
                              "CHARSET=UTF8",
                              ansi=True)

    # For explicitly opening database connection
    def __enter__(self):
        self.dbconn = self.create_connection()
        return self.dbconn

    def __exit__(self, exc_type, exc_val, exc_tb):
        self.dbconn.close()

DBConnection class for managing the connections

class DBConnection(object):
    connection = None

    @classmethod
    def get_connection(cls, new=False):
        """Creates return new Singleton database connection"""
        if new or not cls.connection:
            cls.connection = DBConnector().create_connection()
        return cls.connection

    @classmethod
    def execute_query(cls, query):
        """execute query on singleton db connection"""
        connection = cls.get_connection()
        try:
            cursor = connection.cursor()
        except pyodbc.ProgrammingError:
            connection = cls.get_connection(new=True)  # Create new connection
            cursor = connection.cursor()
        cursor.execute(query)
        result = cursor.fetchall()
        cursor.close()
        return result