Release: 1.3.2 | Release Date: April 2, 2019

# SQLAlchemy 1.3 Documentation

# Source code for examples.elementtree.pickle_type

    """
    illustrates a quick and dirty way to persist an XML document expressed using
    ElementTree and pickle.

    This is a trivial example using PickleType to marshal/unmarshal the ElementTree
    document into a binary column.  Compare to explicit.py which stores the
    individual components of the ElementTree structure in distinct rows using two
    additional mapped entities.  Note that the usage of both styles of persistence
    are identical, as is the structure of the main Document class.

    """

    import os
    from xml.etree import ElementTree

    from sqlalchemy import Column
    from sqlalchemy import create_engine
    from sqlalchemy import Integer
    from sqlalchemy import MetaData
    from sqlalchemy import PickleType
    from sqlalchemy import String
    from sqlalchemy import Table
    from sqlalchemy.orm import mapper
    from sqlalchemy.orm import Session

    e = create_engine("sqlite://")
    meta = MetaData()

    # setup a comparator for the PickleType since it's a mutable
    # element.

    def are_elements_equal(x, y):
        return x == y

    # stores a top level record of an XML document.
    # the "element" column will store the ElementTree document as a BLOB.
    documents = Table(
        "documents",
        meta,
        Column("document_id", Integer, primary_key=True),
        Column("filename", String(30), unique=True),
        Column("element", PickleType(comparator=are_elements_equal)),
    )

    meta.create_all(e)

    # our document class.  contains a string name,
    # and the ElementTree root element.

    class Document(object):
        def __init__(self, name, element):
            self.filename = name
            self.element = element

    # setup mapper.
    mapper(Document, documents)

    # time to test !

    # get ElementTree document
    filename = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), "test.xml")
    doc = ElementTree.parse(filename)

    # save to DB
    session = Session(e)
    session.add(Document("test.xml", doc))
    session.commit()

    # restore
    document = session.query(Document).filter_by(filename="test.xml").first()

    # print
    ElementTree.dump(document.element)