SQLALchemy update ARRAY column [duplicate] - sqlalchemy

Question

I'm working on a project using Flask and a PostgreSQL database, with SQLAlchemy.
I have Group objects which have a list of User IDs who are members of the group. For some reason, when I try to add an ID to a group, it will not save properly.
If I try members.append(user_id), it doesn't seem to work at all. However, if I try members += [user_id], the id will show up in the view listing all the groups, but if I restart the server, the added value(s) is (are) not there. The initial values, however, are.
Related code:
Adding group to the database initially:
db = SQLAlchemy(app)
# ...
g = Group(request.form['name'], user_id)
db.session.add(g)
db.session.commit()
The Group class:
from flask.ext.sqlalchemy import SQLAlchemy
from sqlalchemy.dialects.postgresql import ARRAY
class Group(db.Model):
__tablename__ = "groups"
id = db.Column(db.Integer, primary_key=True)
name = db.Column(db.String(128))
leader = db.Column(db.Integer)
# list of the members in the group based on user id
members = db.Column(ARRAY(db.Integer))
def __init__(self, name, leader):
self.name = name
self.leader = leader
self.members = [leader]
def __repr__(self):
return "Name: {}, Leader: {}, Members: {}".format(self.name, self.leader, self.members)
def add_user(self, user_id):
self.members += [user_id]
My test function for updating the Group:
def add_2_to_group():
g = Group.query.all()[0]
g.add_user(2)
db.session.commit()
return redirect(url_for('show_groups'))
Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

As you have mentioned, the ARRAY datatype in sqlalchemy is immutable. This means it isn’t possible to add new data into array once it has been initialised.
To solve this, create class MutableList.
from sqlalchemy.ext.mutable import Mutable
class MutableList(Mutable, list):
def append(self, value):
list.append(self, value)
self.changed()
#classmethod
def coerce(cls, key, value):
if not isinstance(value, MutableList):
if isinstance(value, list):
return MutableList(value)
return Mutable.coerce(key, value)
else:
return value
This snippet allows you to extend a list to add mutability to it. So, now you can use the class above to create a mutable array type like:
class Group(db.Model):
...
members = db.Column(MutableList.as_mutable(ARRAY(db.Integer)))
...

Answer 2

You can use the flag_modified function to mark the property as having changed. In this example, you could change your add_user method to:
from sqlalchemy.orm.attributes import flag_modified
# ~~~
def add_user(self, user_id):
self.members += [user_id]
flag_modified(self, 'members')

Answer 3

To anyone in the future: so it turns out that arrays through SQLAlchemy are immutable. So, once they're initialized in the database, they can't change size. There's probably a way to do this, but there are better ways to do what we're trying to do.

Answer 4

This is a hacky solution, but what you can do is:
Store the existing array temporarily
Set the column value to None
Set the column value to the existing temporary array
For example:
g = Group.query.all()[0]
temp_array = g.members
g.members = None
db.session.commit()
db.session.refresh(g)
g.members = temp_array
db.session.commit()

Answer 5

In my case it was solved by using the new reference for storing a object variable and assiging that new created variable in object variable.so, Instead of updating the existing objects variable it will create a new reference address which reflect the changes.
Here in Model,
Table: question
optional_id = sa.Column(sa.ARRAY(sa.Integer), nullable=True)
In views,
option_list=list(question.optional_id if question.optional_id else [])
if option_list:
question.optional_id.clear()
option_list.append(obj.id)
question.optional_id=option_list
else:
question.optional_id=[obj.id]