How not to start transaction automatically in Pyramid?

Question

I've created simple Pyramid app which uses SQLAlchemy, pyramid_tm, pyramid_beaker and alembic. Database is PostgreSQL and adapter is pg8000. Now I'm trying to implement login but the first DB query to the database creates BEGIN transaction and hangs forever. I'd like to setup transactions only when needed (UPDATE, DELETE, INSERT and more complex multi-queries).

models/user.py :

from sqlalchemy import Column
from sqlalchemy import Unicode
from sqlalchemy import Sequence
from sqlalchemy import Integer
from sqlalchemy import Index
from sqlalchemy import CheckConstraint
from sqlalchemy import text
from sqlalchemy import func
from sqlalchemy.dialects.postgresql import TIMESTAMP

from pyramid.security import Allow

import sqlalchemy.orm.exc as a_exc

import logging

log = logging.getLogger(__name__)


from ..models import DBSession
from ..models import Base

class UserNotFoundException(ValueError):
    pass


class User(Base):
    __tablename__ = 'users'

    __table_args__ = (
        CheckConstraint("login ~* '^[a-z]{3,}$'", name = __tablename__ + "_chk_login"),
        CheckConstraint("login != ''", name = __tablename__ + "_chk_login_not_empty"),
        CheckConstraint("password != ''", name = __tablename__ + "_chk_pw_not_empty"),
        Index(__tablename__ + "_idx_lower_login", text("lower(login)"), unique = True),
    )

    id = Column(Integer, Sequence('users_id_seq'), primary_key = True)
    login = Column(Unicode(64), unique = True, nullable = False, server_default = text("''"))
    password = Column(Unicode(255), nullable = False, server_default = text("''"))
    added = Column(TIMESTAMP, nullable = False, server_default = text("NOW()"))


    @property
    def __acl__(self):
        return [(Allow, self.login, 'view'), ]

    def __init__(self, login, password):
        self.login = login
        self.password = password

    @classmethod
    def get_user(self, login):
        try:
            u = DBSession.query(User).filter(User.login == login).one()
            DBSession.flush()
            return u
        except a_exc.NoResultFound as exc:
            raise UserNotFoundException(exc)

    @classmethod
    def get_user_count(self):
        u = DBSession.query(func.count(User.id)).scalar()
        DBSession.flush()
        return u

    @classmethod
    def create_session(self, login: str, password: str) -> object:
        u = self.get_user(login)

        import bcrypt
        password = password.encode('utf-8')

        try:
            verified = bcrypt.checkpw(password = password, hashed_password = u.password.encode('utf-8'))
        except Exception as exc:
            raise

        if verified != True:
            raise Exception("Coulnd't verify password hash")

        return {'userid': u.id}

    @classmethod
    def add_user(self, login, password):
        import bcrypt
        password = password.encode('utf-8')

        encrypted_pw = bcrypt.hashpw(password, bcrypt.gensalt())
        verified = False

        log.debug("Encrypted PW: '%s'", encrypted_pw)

        try:
            verified = bcrypt.checkpw(password = password, hashed_password = encrypted_pw)
        except Exception:
            raise

        if verified != True:
            raise Exception("Coulnd't verify password hash")

        try:
            DBSession.begin(subtransactions=True)
            DBSession.add(User(login = login, password = encrypted_pw.decode()))
            DBSession.commit()
            log.debug("User added: '%s'", login)
        except Exception as exc:
            DBSession.rollback()
            log.debug("User add failed for user '%s'", login)
            raise

views/views.py :

@view_config(route_name = 'login', renderer = 'templates/login.pt')
def app_login_view(request: Request):
    if request.authenticated_userid:
        # Already logged in -> redirect
        import pyramid.httpexceptions as exc
        return exc.HTTPFound(request.route_path('home'))

    user_not_found_error = {
        'page_background': 'warning',
        'page_title':      _(u"Login failed"),
        'page_text':       _(u"Check username and password."),
    }

    form_user = request.POST.get('user')
    form_password = request.POST.get('password')

    from ..models import User, UserNotFoundException

    if User.get_user_count() == 0:
        # No users in DB
        log.debug("Creating admin user")
        User.add_user(u"admin", u"admin")

    try:
        ses = User.create_session(form_user, form_password)
        request.session['userid'] = ses['userid']
        request.session.save()
        remember(request, ses['userid'])
    except UserNotFoundException as exc:
        log.debug("User '%s' not found in database", form_user)
        return user_not_found_error
    except:
        raise

    # Redirect to front page
    import pyramid.httpexceptions as exc
    return exc.HTTPFound(request.route_path('home'))

Log:

INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine.dbconn BEGIN (implicit)
INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine.dbconn SELECT count(users.id) AS count_1 
FROM users
INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine.dbconn ()
DEBUG [waitress] Creating admin user
DEBUG [user][waitress] Encrypted PW: 'b'$2b$12$n6mN973Gz0wwX7B0kWI.Ae099h7mvLo.mEI.D2NFjZKaLKbGebK16''
INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine.dbconn INSERT INTO users (id, login, password) VALUES (nextval('users_id_seq'), %s, %s) RETURNING users.id
INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine.dbconn ('admin', '$2b$12$n6mN973Gz0wwX7B0kWI.Ae099h7mvLo.mEI.D2NFjZKaLKbGebK16')
INFO  [sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine.dbconn:109][waitress] INSERT INTO users (id, login, password) VALUES (nextval('users_id_seq'), %s, %s) RETURNING users.id
INFO  [sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine.dbconn:109][waitress] ('admin', '$2b$12$n6mN973Gz0wwX7B0kWI.Ae099h7mvLo.mEI.D2NFjZKaLKbGebK16')
... Hangs here forever ...

If I remove subtransactions=True from add_user() I get:

sqlalchemy.exc.InvalidRequestError: A transaction is already begun.  Use subtransactions=True to allow subtransactions.

Also when I POST to /login I see Session Variables in the Request Vars tab in the DebugToolbar with _accessed_time and _creation_time but nothing about userid and after the redirect to / there's no Session Variables at all.

Answer 1

The appropriate way to perform an insert and handle the error (rollback) is by using a savepoint and flush() .

sp = request.tm.savepoint()
try:
    DBSession.add(User(login = login, password = encrypted_pw.decode()))
    DBSession.flush()
    log.debug("User added: '%s'", login)
except Exception as exc:
    sp.rollback()
    log.debug("User add failed for user '%s'", login)
    raise

However, you aren't even doing anything with the error in your example so you could simply be using .add without any of the extra boilerplate.

At the end of the request pyramid_tm will issue the final commit. The flush executes the pending SQL commands in an open transaction on the database, allowing you to catch potential errors.