Getting column names from a cursor using ODBC module?

[dananrg]

Is there any way to retrieve column names from a cursor using the ODBC
module? Or must I, in advance, create a dictionary of column position
and column names for a particular table before I can access column
values by column names? I'd prefer sticking with the ODBC module for
now because it comes standard in Python.

I'm using Python 2.4 at the moment.

Thanks.

 

[John Machin]

Is there any way to retrieve column names from a cursor using the ODBC
module? Or must I, in advance, create a dictionary of column position
and column names for a particular table before I can access column
values by column names? I'd prefer sticking with the ODBC module for
now because it comes standard in Python.

I'm using Python 2.4 at the moment.

Thanks.

 

[John Machin]

Is there any way to retrieve column names from a cursor using the ODBC
module? Or must I, in advance, create a dictionary of column position
and column names for a particular table before I can access column
values by column names? I'd prefer sticking with the ODBC module for
now because it comes standard in Python.

I'm using Python 2.4 at the moment.

Do you mean the odbc module? If so, it doesn't come standard in
Python; it's part of the win32 package.

I haven't used it for years -- my preference on Windows these days
would be mxODBC if the client would pay the licence fee, otherwise
pyodbc. Sorry I'm not answering your question ... perhaps you should
be asking a different question

Cheers,
John

 

[John Machin]

Do you mean the odbc module? If so, it doesn't come standard in
Python; it's part of the win32 package.

I haven't used it for years -- my preference on Windows these days
would be mxODBC if the client would pay the licence fee, otherwise
pyodbc. Sorry I'm not answering your question ... perhaps you should
be asking a different question

Cheers,
John

But to help you answer your question: if the module that you are using
supports the 2.0 version of the database API (see http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0249/),
then it will support the cursor.description attribute, which gives you
not only the name but the type and 5 other bits of info about each
column. If it doesn't, I'd suggest moving on.

HTH,
John

 

[Chris]

Is there any way to retrieve column names from a cursor using the ODBC
module? Or must I, in advance, create a dictionary of column position
and column names for a particular table before I can access column
values by column names? I'd prefer sticking with the ODBC module for
now because it comes standard in Python.

I'm using Python 2.4 at the moment.

Thanks.

You should be able to do

column_names = [d[0] for d in cursor.description]

 

[dananrg]

Thanks Chris and John. Chris, this worked perfectly with the ODBC
module that ships with Python Win32:

column_names = [d[0] for d in cursor.description]

John, I've never heard of pyodbc but I'll have to look into it.

Thanks again.

Dana

 

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Do you mean the odbc module? If so, it doesn't come standard in
Python; it's part of the win32 package.

I haven't used it for years -- my preference on Windows these days
would be mxODBC if the client would pay the licence fee, otherwise
pyodbc. Sorry I'm not answering your question ... perhaps you should
be asking a different question

mxODBC comes with a cursor.columns() method which allows you to
query column names and many other column specific details of the
database.

See the documentation for details:

http://www.egenix.com/products/python/mxODBC/#Documentation

If you just want to access the result set columns by name,
you can use the cursor.description tuple to map names to
positions.

Please also see the FAQ of the DB API spec reagrding the issues
involved with this approach:

http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0249/

--
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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