[Tutor] escape-quoting strings

[Marilyn Davis]

Thank you Danny.

Another wonderful thing that isn't well-documented as far as I can
tell, although it is mentioned in the reference manual, is using a
dictionary to fill in the %(key)s slots in a format string.

I learned this by studying Mailman code.  It's a huge feature IMHO.

And another thing, when, in Python code, can I hit the return key
mid-statement?  After a ',', and when else?  I've sort of given up
trying to break up statements.

Thank you tutors.  This list is soooooo helpful.

Marilyn


On Mon, 1 Nov 2004, Danny Yoo wrote:

> 
> 
> On Mon, 1 Nov 2004, Lloyd Kvam wrote:
> 
> > http://python.org/topics/database/
> >
> > Read the DB-API spec version 2
> >
> > All of the module documentation assumes you are already familiar with
> > the DB-API (DBI) and only deals with other issues.  The ability of the
> > module to map your data into the query becomes critical when dealing
> > with binary data.
> >
> > On Mon, 2004-11-01 at 00:32, Marilyn Davis wrote:
> > > I don't see it in the documentation for MySQLdb at all!  Should I be
> > > looking somewhere else?
> > >
> > > How did you learn this?
> > >
> > > I wish I knew this a few months ago.  Where have you been?? ;^)
> 
> 
> Hi Marylyn,
> 
> All the SQL bindings in the programming languages I've seen provide some
> kind of "prepared statement" syntax, since quotation is tricky to deal
> with.  Java does it with its 'java.sql.PreparedStatement' class, and Perl
> also supports it with its DBI::bind_param stuff.
> 
> But you're right, though: using a prepared statement is not obvious.
> It's like one of those trial-by-fire sort of things.  It does seem to be a
> very frequently asked question that is not well addressed by the current
> documentation.
> 
> 
> I'd love to see this addressed directly in the Python-SQL tutorials out
> there.  For example:
> 
>     http://www.amk.ca/python/writing/DB-API.html
> 
> just sneaks the prepared syntax stuff in near the end, in the section
> about Transactions, and doesn't highlight the reasons for using it.  The
> other tutorial I often point folks to is the on by Devshed:
> 
> http://www.devshed.com/index2.php?option=content&task=view&id=210&pop=1&page=0&hide_js=1
> 
> and it does use the prepared statement syntax... but, again, doesn't
> explain what makes it better than direct interpolation.  And since
> MySQLdb's prepared statement syntax looks almost like String Formatting,
> it's not really obvious why using it is any better than just doing the
> interpolation directly.
> 
> 
> Does anyone want a crack at writing a tutorial about this?  *grin* Maybe
> someone on the Tutor list can write something up and get it linked to the
> Database Topics page:
> 
>     http://www.python.org/topics/database/docs.html
> 
> 
> 

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