Pythonic way to create a long multi-line string

Question

I have a very long query. I would like to split it in several lines in Python. A way to do it in JavaScript would be using several sentences and joining them with a +<

Answer 1

I personally find the following to be the best (simple, safe and Pythonic) way to write raw SQL queries in Python, especially when using Python's sqlite3 module:

query = '''
    SELECT
        action.descr as action,
        role.id as role_id,
        role.descr as role
    FROM
        public.role_action_def,
        public.role,
        public.record_def,
        public.action
    WHERE
        role.id = role_action_def.role_id
        AND record_def.id = role_action_def.def_id
        AND action.id = role_action_def.action_id
        AND role_action_def.account_id = ?
        AND record_def.account_id = ?
        AND def_id = ?
'''
vars = (account_id, account_id, def_id)   # a tuple of query variables
cursor.execute(query, vars)   # using Python's sqlite3 module

Pros

• Neat and simple code (Pythonic!)
• Safe from SQL injection
• Compatible with both Python 2 and Python 3 (it's Pythonic after all)
• No string concatenation required
• No need to ensure that the right-most character of each line is a space

Cons

• Since variables in the query are replaced by the ? placeholder, it may become a little difficult to keep track of which ? is to be substituted by which Python variable when there are lots of them in the query.