streampq

Stream results of multi-statement PostgreSQL queries from Python without server-side cursors. Has benefits over some other Python PostgreSQL libraries:

• Streams results from complex multi-statement queries even though SQL doesn't allow server-side cursors for such queries - suitable for large amounts of results that don't fit in memory.

• CTRL+C (SIGINT) by default behaves as expected even during slow queries - a KeyboardInterrupt is raised and quickly bubbles up through streampq code. Unless client code prevents it, the program will exit.

• Every effort is made to cancel queries on KeyboardInterrupt, SystemExit, or errors - the server doesn't continue needlessly using resources.

Particularly useful when temporary tables are needed to store intermediate results in multi-statement SQL scripts, or when using a server-side cursor would make a query slower. Instead of server-side cursors libpq's single-row mode is used.

Installation

pip install streampq

The libpq binary library is also required. This is typically either already installed, or installed by:

• macOS + brew: brew install libpq
• Linux (Debian): apt install libpq5
• Linux (Red Hat):yum install postgresql-libs

The only runtime dependencies are libpq and Python itself.

Usage

from streampq import streampq_connect

# libpq connection paramters
# https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/libpq-connect.html#LIBPQ-PARAMKEYWORDS
#
# Any can be ommitted and environment variables will be used instead
# https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/libpq-envars.html
connection_params = (
    ('host', 'localhost'),
    ('port', '5432'),
    ('dbname', 'postgres'),
    ('user', 'postgres'),
    ('password', 'password'),
)

# SQL statement(s) - if more than one, separate by ;
sql = '''
    SELECT * FROM my_table;
    SELECT * FROM my_other_table;
'''

# Connection and querying is via a context manager
with streampq_connect(connection_params) as query:
    for (columns, rows) in query(sql):
        print(columns)  # Tuple of column names (see below)

        for row in rows:
            print(row)  # Tuple of row values

Single pandas dataframe of SQL query results

You can create a Pandas dataframe of SQL query results. This loads all results into memory.

import itertools
import pandas as pd
from streampq import streampq_connect

connection_params = (
    ('host', 'localhost'),
    ('port', '5432'),
    ('dbname', 'postgres'),
    ('user', 'postgres'),
    ('password', 'password'),
)

sql = '''
    SELECT * FROM my_table;
    SELECT * FROM my_other_table;
'''

with streampq_connect(connection_params) as query:
    for columns, rows in query(sql):
        df = pd.DataFrame(rows, columns=columns)
        print(df)

Chunked Pandas dataframes of SQL query results

For larger sets of results that don't fit into memory, you can create chunked Pandas dataframes of SQL query results, similar to the output of using the chunksize parameter of the Pandas read_csv function. This uses a helper function to do the chunking.

import itertools
import pandas as pd
from streampq import streampq_connect

connection_params = (
    ('host', 'localhost'),
    ('port', '5432'),
    ('dbname', 'postgres'),
    ('user', 'postgres'),
    ('password', 'password'),
)

sql = '''
    SELECT * FROM my_table;
    SELECT * FROM my_other_table;
'''

def query_chunked_dfs(query, sql, chunk_size):

    def _chunked_df(columns, rows):
        it = iter(rows)
        while True:
            df = pd.DataFrame(itertools.islice(it, chunk_size), columns=columns)
            if len(df) == 0:
                break
            yield df

    for columns, rows in query(sql):
        yield _chunked_df(columns, rows)

with streampq_connect(connection_params) as query:
    for chunked_dfs in query_chunked_dfs(query, sql, chunk_size=10000):
        for df in chunked_dfs:
            print(df)

Column names

Each column is an instance of streampq.Column, a subclass of str with two extra attributes:

• type_id

  The PostgresSQL type id of the column. For example 25 indicates text.

• type_modifier

  The PostgreSQL type modifier of the column. This is often -1 to indicate no modification.

While it's not typical to subclass str in Python, it's much more frequent to only need the column name for query results than the PostgreSQL type ID and modifier.

PostgreSQL types to Python type decoding

There are 194 built-in PostgreSQL data types (including array types), and streampq converts them to Python types. In summary:

PostgreSQL types	Python type
null	None
text (e.g. varchar), xml, network addresses, and money	str
byte (e.g. bytea)	bytes
integer (e.g. int4)	int
inexact real number (e.g. float4)	float
exact real number (e.g. numeric)	Decimal
date	date (+ and - infinity are mapped to date.max and date.min respectively)
timestamp	datetime (without timezone, + and - infinity are mapped to datetime.max and datetime.min respectively)
timestamptz	datetime (with offset timezone, + and - infinity are mapped to datetime.max and datetime.min respectively)
json and jsonb	output of json.loads
interval	streampq.Interval
range (e.g. daterange)	streampq.Range
multirange (e.g. datemultirange)	tuples of streampq.Range
arrays and vectors	tuple (of any of the above types, or of nested tuples)

To customise these, override the default value of the get_decoders parameter of the streampq_connect function in streampq.py.

In general, built-in types are preferred over custom types, and immutable types are preferred over mutable.

streampq.Interval

The Python built-in timedelta type is not used for PostgreSQL interval since timedelta does not offer a way to store PostgreSQL intervals of years or months, other than converting to days which would be a loss of information.

Instead, a namedtuple is defined, streampq.Interval, with members:

Member	Type
years	int
months	int
days	int
hours	int
minutes	int
seconds	Decimal

streampq.Range

There is no Python built-in type for a PosgreSQL range. So for these, a namedtuple is defined, streampq.Range, with members:

Member	Type
lower	int, date, datetime (without timezone), or datetime (with offset timezone)
upper	int, date, datetime (without timezone), or datetime (with offset timezone)
bounds	str - one of (), (], [), or []

Bind parameters - literals

Dynamic SQL literals can be bound using the literals parameter of the query function. It must be an iterable of key-value pairs.

sql = '''
    SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE my_col = {my_col_value};
'''

with streampq_connect(connection_params) as query:
    for (columns, rows) in query(sql, literals=(
        ('my_col_value', 'my-value'),
    )):
        for row in rows:
            pass

Bind parameters - identifiers

Dynamic SQL identifiers, e.g. column names, can be bound using the identifiers parameter of the query function. It must be an iterable of key-value pairs.

sql = '''
    SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE {column_name} = 'my-value';
'''

with streampq_connect(connection_params) as query:
    for (columns, rows) in query(sql, identifiers=(
        ('column_name', 'my_col'),
    )):
        for row in rows:
            pass

Identifiers and literals use different escaping rules - hence the need for 2 different parameters.

Single-statement SQL queries

While this library is specialsed for multi-statement queries, it works fine when there is only one. In this case the iterable returned from the query function yields only a single (columns, rows) pair.

Exceptions

Exceptions derive from streampq.StreamPQError. If there is any more information available on the error, it's added as a string in its args property. This is included in the string representation of the exception by default.

Exception hierarchy

• StreamPQError

  Base class for all explicitly-thrown exceptions

  • ConnectionError

    An error occurred while attempting to connect to the database.

  • QueryError

    An error occurred while attempting to run a query. Typically this is due to a syntax error or a missing column. A QueryError has an extra attribute:

    • fields

      A tuple of (error field name, value) pairs with more detailed information on the error. The libpq error field names are used, but in lowercase and without the PG_DIAG_ prefix.

  • CancelError

    An error occurred while attempting to cancel a query.

  • CommunicationError

    An error occurred communicating with the database after successful connection.