sqlalchemy,creating an sqlite database if it doesn't exist

Question

I am trying out sqlalchemy and i am using this connection string to connect to my databases

engine = create_engine(\'sqlite:///C:\\\\sqlitedbs\\\\database.db\')
         


        

Answer 1

I found (using sqlite+pysqlite) that if the directory exists, it will create it, but if the directory does not exist it throws an exception:

OperationalError: (sqlite3.OperationalError) unable to open database file

My workaround is to do this, although it feels nasty:

    if connection_string.startswith('sqlite'):
        db_file = re.sub("sqlite.*:///", "", connection_string)
        os.makedirs(os.path.dirname(db_file), exist_ok=True)
    self.engine = sqlalchemy.create_engine(connection_string)