127
votes

How can I add the filter as in SQL to select values that are NOT NULL from a certain column ?

SELECT * 
FROM table 
WHERE YourColumn IS NOT NULL;

How can I do the same with SQLAlchemy filters?

select = select(table).select_from(table).where(all_filters) 
3
What is all_filters here? Why the select_from? - Martijn Pieters♦
And do you have a table definition or do you need to use column literals? - Martijn Pieters♦

3 Answers

162
votes

column_obj != None will produce a IS NOT NULL constraint:

In a column context, produces the clause a != b. If the target is None, produces a IS NOT NULL.

or use isnot() (new in 0.7.9):

Implement the IS NOT operator.

Normally, IS NOT is generated automatically when comparing to a value of None, which resolves to NULL. However, explicit usage of IS NOT may be desirable if comparing to boolean values on certain platforms.

Demo:

>>> from sqlalchemy.sql import column
>>> column('YourColumn') != None
<sqlalchemy.sql.elements.BinaryExpression object at 0x10c8d8b90>
>>> str(column('YourColumn') != None)
'"YourColumn" IS NOT NULL'
>>> column('YourColumn').isnot(None)
<sqlalchemy.sql.elements.BinaryExpression object at 0x104603850>
>>> str(column('YourColumn').isnot(None))
'"YourColumn" IS NOT NULL'
122
votes

Starting in version 0.7.9 you can use the filter operator .isnot instead of comparing constraints, like this:

query.filter(User.name.isnot(None))

This method is only necessary if pep8 is a concern.

source: sqlalchemy documentation

55
votes

In case anyone else is wondering, you can use is_ to generate foo IS NULL:

>>> from sqlalchemy.sql import column
>>> print column('foo').is_(None)
foo IS NULL
>>> print column('foo').isnot(None)
foo IS NOT NULL