How to check if record exists with Python MySQdb

Question

Im creating a python program that connects to mysql.

i need to check if a table contains the number 1 to show that it has connected successfully, this is my code thus far:

xcnx.execute('CREATE TABLE settings(status INT(1) NOT NULL)')
  xcnx.execute('INSERT INTO settings(status) VALUES(1)')
  cnx.commit()
  sqlq = "SELECT * FROM settings WHERE status = '1'"
  xcnx.execute(sqlq)
  results = xcnx.fetchall()
  if results =='1':
    print 'yep its connected'
  else:
    print 'nope not connected'

what have i missed? i am an sql noob, thanks guys.

Answer 1

I believe the most efficient "does it exist" query is just to do a count:

sqlq = "SELECT COUNT(1) FROM settings WHERE status = '1'"
xcnx.execute(sqlq)
if xcnx.fetchone()[0]:
    # exists

Instead of asking the database to perform any count operations on fields or rows, you are just asking it to return a 1 or 0 if the result produces any matches. This is much more efficient that returning actual records and counting the amount client side because it saves serialization and deserialization on both sides, and the data transfer.

In [22]: c.execute("select count(1) from settings where status = 1")
Out[22]: 1L  # rows

In [23]: c.fetchone()[0]
Out[23]: 1L  # count found a match

In [24]: c.execute("select count(1) from settings where status = 2")
Out[24]: 1L  # rows

In [25]: c.fetchone()[0]
Out[25]: 0L  # count did not find a match

count(*) is going to be the same as count(1). In your case because you are creating a new table, it is going to show 1 result. If you have 10,000 matches it would be 10000. But all you care about in your test is whether it is NOT 0, so you can perform a bool truth test.

Update

Actually, it is even faster to just use the rowcount, and not even fetch results:

In [15]: if c.execute("select (1) from settings where status = 1 limit 1"): 
            print True
True

In [16]: if c.execute("select (1) from settings where status = 10 limit 1"): 
            print True

In [17]: 

This is also how django's ORM does a queryObject.exists().