MySQL-python: SELECT returns 'long' instead of the query

Question

I'm having a problem with running a select query, using mysql-python, on an established database. The issue is that a number, what Python refers to as a long, is returned instead of the data queried- it should be noted that this number corresponds to the number of records which should be returned (I logged into the database and ran the query from MySQL to make sure).

Here is the code:

db = MySQLdb.connect(db = 'testdb', user='testuser', passwd='test', host='localhost', charset='utf8', use_unicode=True)
dbc = db.cursor()
result = dbc.execute("""SELECT %s FROM example_movie""", ('title',))
urls = [row[0] for row in result]

The last bit of code, urls = [row[0] for row in result] is to put everything into a list.

The error looks like this:

 TypeError: 'long' object is not iterable

When I have python print result it returns:

('RESULT:', 52L)

When I enclose result like str(result) it just returns the number 52 (not long)

Any help and suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Chris Palmer · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-22 17:27:46Z

5

The return value from dbc.execute is not the results of the select; I believe it is the number of rows in the results. In order to get the actual results you need to call one of the fetch methods. See documentation here.

You should update your code to read:

db = MySQLdb.connect(db = 'testdb', user='testuser', passwd='test', host='localhost', charset='utf8', use_unicode=True)
dbc = db.cursor()
row_count = dbc.execute("""SELECT title FROM example_movie""")
results = dbc.fetchall()
urls = [row[0] for row in result]

edited Aug 22, 2013 at 17:27

answered Aug 22, 2013 at 16:32

Chris Palmer

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3 Comments

DMML Over a year ago

Hey thanks for taking the time to respond! When I execute this it just prints a big list of [u'title,...., u'title]. Is there a way to actually get the titles of these movies?

DMML Over a year ago

Actually! If I just do dbc.execute("""SELECT title FROM example_movie""") that makes it work! (As opposed to the method I was using). I'll mark your answer as accept! Feel free to add this bit into it.

newtover Over a year ago

@FortyLashes, one can not parametrize column names, the parameters become string literals, and you see them in the output.

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