Python mysql (using pymysql) auto reconnect

Question

I'm not sure if this is possible, but I'm looking for a way to reconnect to mysql database when the connection is lost. All the connections are held in a gevent queue but that shouldn't matter I think. I'm sure if I put some time in, I can come up with a way to reconnect to the database. However I was glancing pymysql code and I saw that there is a 'ping' method in Connection class, which I'm not sure exactly how to use.

The method looks like it will reconnect first time but after that it switched the reconnect flag to False again? Can I use this method, or is there a different way to establish connection if it is lost? Even if it is not pymysql how do people tackle, database servers going down and having to re-establish connection to mysql server?

def ping(self, reconnect=True):
    ''' Check if the server is alive '''
    if self.socket is None:
        if reconnect:
            self._connect()
            reconnect = False
        else:
            raise Error("Already closed")
    try:
        self._execute_command(COM_PING, "")
        return self._read_ok_packet()
    except Exception:
        if reconnect:
            self._connect()
            return self.ping(False)
        else:
            raise

Answer 1

Finally got a working solution, might help someone.

from gevent import monkey
monkey.patch_socket()
import logging

import gevent
from gevent.queue import Queue
import pymysql as db

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.DEBUG)
LOGGER = logging.getLogger("connection_pool")


class ConnectionPool:
    def __init__(self, db_config, time_to_sleep=30, test_run=False):
        self.username = db_config.get('user')
        self.password = db_config.get('password')
        self.host = db_config.get('host')
        self.port = int(db_config.get('port'))
        self.max_pool_size = 20
        self.test_run = test_run
        self.pool = None
        self.time_to_sleep = time_to_sleep
        self._initialize_pool()

    def get_initialized_connection_pool(self):
        return self.pool

    def _initialize_pool(self):
        self.pool = Queue(maxsize=self.max_pool_size)
        current_pool_size = self.pool.qsize()
        if current_pool_size < self.max_pool_size:  # this is a redundant check, can be removed
            for _ in xrange(0, self.max_pool_size - current_pool_size):
                try:
                    conn = db.connect(host=self.host,
                                      user=self.username,
                                      passwd=self.password,
                                      port=self.port)
                    self.pool.put_nowait(conn)

                except db.OperationalError, e:
                    LOGGER.error("Cannot initialize connection pool - retrying in {} seconds".format(self.time_to_sleep))
                    LOGGER.exception(e)
                    break
        self._check_for_connection_loss()

    def _re_initialize_pool(self):
        gevent.sleep(self.time_to_sleep)
        self._initialize_pool()

    def _check_for_connection_loss(self):
        while True:
            conn = None
            if self.pool.qsize() > 0:
                conn = self.pool.get()

            if not self._ping(conn):
                if self.test_run:
                    self.port = 3306

                self._re_initialize_pool()

            else:
                self.pool.put_nowait(conn)

            if self.test_run:
                break
            gevent.sleep(self.time_to_sleep)

    def _ping(self, conn):
        try:
            if conn is None:
                conn = db.connect(host=self.host,
                                  user=self.username,
                                  passwd=self.password,
                                  port=self.port)
            cursor = conn.cursor()
            cursor.execute('select 1;')
            LOGGER.debug(cursor.fetchall())
            return True

        except db.OperationalError, e:
            LOGGER.warn('Cannot connect to mysql - retrying in {} seconds'.format(self.time_to_sleep))
            LOGGER.exception(e)
            return False

# test (pytest compatible) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
import logging

from src.py.ConnectionPool import ConnectionPool

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.DEBUG)
LOGGER = logging.getLogger("test_connection_pool")


def test_get_initialized_connection_pool():
    config = {
        'user': 'root',
        'password': '',
        'host': '127.0.0.1',
        'port': 3305
    }
    conn_pool = ConnectionPool(config, time_to_sleep=5, test_run=True)
    pool = conn_pool.get_initialized_connection_pool()
    # when in test run the port will be switched back to 3306
    # so the queue size should be 20 - will be nice to work 
    # around this rather than test_run hack
    assert pool.qsize() == 20