How do I connect to my RDS MySQL instance programmatically?

Question

Problem

I launched a MySQL RDS instance and was able to successfully connect to it using MySQL Workbench. However, I am still not able to connect to it from my local workstation using the following URI:

'mysql+pymysql://user:password@db_identifier.XXXXXXXXXX.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com:3306/db_name'

or the same URI without the port:

'mysql+pymysql://user:password@db_identifier.XXXXXXXXXX.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com/db_name'

The error that I receive when I specify this as my database URI and execute a db.create_all() command is:

sqlalchemy.exc.OperationalError: 
(pymysql.err.OperationalError) 
(2003, "Can't connect to MySQL server on 'db_identifier.XXXXXXXXXX.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com' 
([WinError 10060] A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not 
properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because 
connected host has failed to respond)")

Question

What can I do to connect using pymysql? And why would it connect with MySQL Workbench and not through this URI?

Context

I am following the tutorial here. This uses SQLAlchemy to execute the SQL statements in Python.

The RDS instance (and its associated subnet/VPC) have the following:

a security group open on port 3306
NACL rules that allow incoming and outgoing traffic
Public Accessibility set to "Yes"

And if you just try regular pymysql (not using sqlalchemy) or even cli mysql client, does it all work? Just wonder if this is sqlalchemy specific issue only, or has a wider scope. — Marcin

Omar Alvarado Omar Alvarado · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-21T01:35:35

Check my answer on this post, it could be something about the "Public accesibility" option in your rds "Connectivity and Security" section as described here;

https://stackoverflow.com/a/63514997/2934184

How do I connect to my RDS MySQL instance programmatically?

1 Answers