Proper way to construct MySQL queries in python?

Question

After starting with python last week after coming from php I am wondering what is the best way to build a MySQL query.

I am using Python's MySQLdb module.

After doing some research it seems the best way is something similar to the following code below:

def updateEmployee(employee):
 try:
 cursor = db.cursor()
 cursor.execute("""
 UPDATE `employee2` 
 SET `employeeID`=%s, `parentNameN`=%s, `firstName`=%s, `lastName`=%s, `title`=%s, `room`=%s, `locCode`=%s, `posOrg`=%s
 WHERE `employee2`.`nameN`=%s 
 """, (employee["employeeID"], employee["parentNameN"], employee["firstName"], employee["lastName"], employee["title"], employee["room"], employee["locCode"], employee["posOrg"], employee["nameN"]))
 db.commit()
 print employee["nameN"]+" updated"
 except MySQLdb.Error, e:
 print "Error %d: %s" % (e.args[0], e.args[1])
 sys.exit(1)

This is all great except, when this errors I get something such as "Error 1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax:..." which is nice, it says my query was syntactically incorrect.

So I got that part, but how can I view the query in question? Is there a way I can construct this query outside of the cursor.execute so that in situations where I get generic error messages I can at least do a "print query"?

Answer 1

You don't need backquotes in your query. Mistake is here `posOrg`:%s

SET `employeeID`=%s, `parentNameN`=%s, `firstName`=%s, `lastName`=%s,
 `title`=%s, `room`=%s, `locCode`=%s, **`posOrg`:%s**

• Chris: I do not understand your answer?
• baklarz2048: Replace posOrg:%s with posOrg=%s
• Chris: Ah I think its time to take a break from coding. Any suggestions on the original question to general querying in python?