Tracking model changes in SQLAlchemy

Question

I want to log every action what will be done with some SQLAlchemy-Models.

So, I have a after_insert, after_delete and before_update hooks, where I will save previous and

Answer 1

I had a similar problem but wanted to be able to keep track of the deltas as changes are made to sqlalchemy models instead of just the new values. I wrote this slight extension to davidism's answer to do that along with slightly better handling of before and after, since they are lists sometimes or empty tuples other times:

  from sqlalchemy import inspect

  def get_model_changes(model):
    """
    Return a dictionary containing changes made to the model since it was 
    fetched from the database.

    The dictionary is of the form {'property_name': [old_value, new_value]}

    Example:
      user = get_user_by_id(420)
      >>> ''
      get_model_changes(user)
      >>> {}
      user.email = 'new_email@who-dis.biz'
      get_model_changes(user)
      >>> {'email': ['business_email@gmail.com', 'new_email@who-dis.biz']}
    """
    state = inspect(model)
    changes = {}
    for attr in state.attrs:
      hist = state.get_history(attr.key, True)

      if not hist.has_changes():
        continue

      old_value = hist.deleted[0] if hist.deleted else None
      new_value = hist.added[0] if hist.added else None
      changes[attr.key] = [old_value, new_value]

    return changes

  def has_model_changed(model):
    """
    Return True if there are any unsaved changes on the model.
    """
    return bool(get_model_changes(model))