SQLAlchemy - select for update example

Question

If you are using the ORM, try the with_for_update function:

foo = session.query(Foo).filter(Foo.id==1234).with_for_update().one()
# this row is now locked

foo.name = 'bar'
session.add(foo)

session.commit()
# this row is now unlocked

Late answer, but maybe someone will find it useful.

First, you don't need to commit (at least not in-between queries, which I'm assuming you are asking about). Your second query hangs indefinitely, because you are effectively creating two concurrent connections to the database. First one is obtaining lock on selected records, then second one tries to modify locked records. So it can't work properly. (By the way in the example given you are not calling first query at all, so I'm assuming in your real tests you did something like s.execute() somewhere). So to the point—working implementation should look more like:

s = conn.execute(table.select(table.c.user=="test", for_update=True))
u = conn.execute(table.update().where(table.c.user=="test"), {"email": "foo"})
conn.commit()

Of course in such simple case there's no reason to do any locking but I guess it is example only and you were planning to add some additional logic between those two calls.

Yes, you do need to commit, which you can execute on the Engine or create a Transaction explicitely. Also the modifiers are specified in the values(...) method, and not execute:

>>> conn.execute(users.update().
...              where(table.c.user=="test").
...              values(email="foo")
...              ) 
>>> my_engine.commit()