QuerySet Extensions

MySQL-specific Model and QuerySet extensions. To add these to your Model/Manager/QuerySet trifecta, see Installation. Methods below are all QuerySet methods; where standalone forms are referred to, they can be imported from django_mysql.models.

Approximate Counting

django_mysql.models.approx_count(fall_back=True, return_approx_int=True, min_size=1000)

By default a QuerySet’s count() method runs SELECT COUNT(*) on a table. Whilst this is fast for MyISAM tables, for InnoDB it involves a full table scan to produce a consistent number, due to MVCC keeping several copies of rows when under transaction. If you have lots of rows, you will notice this as a slow query - Percona have some more details.

This method returns the approximate count found by running EXPLAIN SELECT COUNT(*) .... It can be out by 30-50% in the worst case, but in many applications it is closer, and is good enough, such as when presenting many pages of results but users will only practically scroll through the first few. For example:

>>> Author.objects.count()  # slow
509741
>>> Author.objects.approx_count()  # fast, with some error
531140

Three arguments are accepted:

fall_back=True

If True and the approximate count cannot be calculated, count() will be called and returned instead, otherwise ValueError will be raised.

The approximation can only be found for objects.all(), with no filters, distinct() calls, etc., so it’s reasonable to fall back.

return_approx_int=True

When True, an int is not returned (excpet when falling back), but instead a subclass called ApproximateInt. This is for all intents and purposes an int, apart from when cast to str, it renders as e.g. ‘Approximately 12345’ (internationalization ready). Useful for templates you can’t edit (e.g. the admin) and you want to communicate that the number is not 100% accurate. For example:

>>> print(Author.objects.approx_count())  # ApproximateInt
Approximately 531140
>>> print(Author.objects.approx_count() + 0)  # plain int
531140
>>> print(Author.objects.approx_count(return_approx_int=False))  # plain int
531140

min_size=1000

The threshold at which to use the approximate algorithm; if the approximate count comes back as less that this number, count() will be called and returned instead, since it should be so small as to not bother your database. Set to 0 to disable this behaviour and always return the approximation.

The default of 1000 is a bit pessimistic - most tables won’t take long when calling COUNT(*) on tens of thousands of rows, but it could be slow for very wide tables.

django_mysql.models.count_tries_approx(activate=True, fall_back=True, return_approx_int=True, min_size=1000)

This is the ‘magic’ method to make pre-existing code, such as Django’s admin, work with approx_count. Calling count_tries_approx sets the QuerySet up such that then calling count will call approx_count instead, with the given arguments.

To unset this, call count_tries_approx with activate=False.

To ‘fix’ an Admin class with this, simply do the following (assuming Author inherits from django_mysql’s Model):

class AuthorAdmin(ModelAdmin):
    def get_queryset(self, request):
        qs = super(AuthorAdmin, self).get_queryset(request)
        return qs.count_tries_approx()

You’ll be able to see this is working on the pagination due to the word ‘Approximately’ appearing:

You can do this at a base class for all your ModelAdmin subclasses to apply the magical speed increase across your admin interface.

Query Hints

The following methods add extra features to the ORM which allow you to access some MySQL-specific syntax. They do this by inserting special comments which pass through Django’s ORM layer and get re-written by a function that wraps the lower-level cursor.execute().

Because not every user wants these features and there is a (small) overhead to every query, you must activate this feature by adding to your settings:

DJANGO_MYSQL_REWRITE_QUERIES = True

Once you’ve done this, the following methods will work.

django_mysql.models.label(comment)

Allows you to add an arbitrary comment to the start of the query, as the second thing after the keyword. This can be used to ‘tag’ queries so that when they show in the slow_log or another monitoring tool, you can easily back track to the python code generating the query. For example, imagine constructing a QuerySet like this:

qs = Author.objects.label("AuthorListView").all()

When executed, this will have SQL starting:

SELECT /*AuthorListView*/ ...

You can add arbitrary labels, and as many of them as you wish - they will appear in the order added. They will work in SELECT and UPDATE statements, but not in DELETE statements due to limitations in the way Django performs deletes.

You should not pass user-supplied data in for the comment. As a basic protection against accidental SQL injection, passing a comment featuring */ will raise a ValueError, since that would prematurely end the comment. However due to executable comments, the comment is still prone to some forms of injection.

However this is a feature - by not including spaces around your string, you may use this injection to use executable comments to add hints that are otherwise not supported, or to use MySQL 5.7+ optimizer hints.

django_mysql.models.straight_join()

Adds the STRAIGHT_JOIN hint, which forces the join order during a SELECT. Note that you can’t force Django’s join order, but it tends to be in the order that the tables get mentioned in the query.

Example usage:

# Note from Adam: sometimes the optimizer joined books -> author, which
# is slow. Force it to do author -> books.
Author.objects.distinct().straight_join().filter(books__age=12)[:10]

Docs: MySQL / MariaDB.

The MariaDB docs also have a good page Index Hints: How to Force Query Plans” which covers some cases when you might want to use STRAIGHT_JOIN.

django_mysql.models.sql_small_result()

Adds the SQL_SMALL_RESULT hint, which avoids using a temporary table in the case of a GROUP BY or DISTINCT.

Example usage:

# Note from Adam: we have very few distinct birthdays, so using a
# temporary table is slower
Author.objects.values("birthday").distinct().sql_small_result()

Docs: MySQL / MariaDB.

django_mysql.models.sql_big_result()

Adds the SQL_BIG_RESULT hint, which forces using a temporary table in the case of a GROUP BY or DISTINCT.

Example usage:

# Note from Adam: for some reason the optimizer didn’t use a temporary
# table for this, so we force it
Author.objects.distinct().sql_big_result()

Docs: MySQL / MariaDB.

django_mysql.models.sql_buffer_result()

Adds the SQL_BUFFER_RESULT hint, which forces the optimizer to use a temporary table to process the result. This is useful to free locks as soon as possible.

Example usage:

# Note from Adam: seeing a lot of throughput on this table. Buffering
# the results makes the queries less contentious.
HighThroughputModel.objects.filter(x=y).sql_buffer_result()

Docs: MySQL / MariaDB.

django_mysql.models.sql_cache()

Adds the SQL_CACHE hint, which means the result set will be stored in the Query Cache. This only has an effect when the MySQL system variable query_cache_type is set to 2 or DEMAND.

Warning

The query cache was removed in MySQL 8.0, and is disabled by default from MariaDB 10.1.7.

Example usage:

# Fetch recent posts, cached in MySQL for speed
recent_posts = BlogPost.objects.sql_cache().order_by("-created")[:5]

Docs: MariaDB.

django_mysql.models.sql_no_cache()

Adds the SQL_NO_CACHE hint, which means the result set will not be fetched from or stored in the Query Cache. This only has an effect when the MySQL system variable query_cache_type is set to 1 or ON.

Warning

The query cache was removed in MySQL 8.0, and is disabled by default from MariaDB 10.1.7.

Example usage:

# Avoid caching all the expired sessions, since we’re about to delete
# them
deletable_session_ids = (
    Session.objects.sql_no_cache().filter(expiry__lt=now()).values_list("id", flat=True)
)

Docs: MariaDB.

django_mysql.models.sql_calc_found_rows()

Adds the SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS hint, which means the total count of matching rows will be calculated when you only take a slice. You can access this count with the found_rows attribute of the QuerySet after filling its result cache, by e.g. iterating it.

This can be faster than taking the slice and then again calling .count() to get the total count.

Warning

This is deprecated in MySQL 8.0.17+.

Example usage:

>>> can_drive = Customer.objects.filter(age=21).sql_calc_found_rows()[:10]
>>> len(can_drive)  # Fetches the first 10 from the database
10
>>> can_drive.found_rows  # The total number of 21 year old customers
1942

Docs: MySQL / MariaDB.

django_mysql.models.use_index(*index_names, for_=None, table_name=None)

Adds a USE INDEX hint, which affects the index choice made by MySQL’s query optimizer for resolving the query.

Note that index names on your tables will normally have been generated by Django and contain a hash fragment. You will have to check your database schema to determine the index name.

If you pass any non-existent index names, MySQL will raise an error. This means index hints are especially important to test in the face of future schema changes.

for_ restricts the scope that the index hint applies to. By default it applies to all potential index uses during the query; you may supply one of 'JOIN', 'ORDER BY', or 'GROUP BY' to restrict the index hint to only be used by MySQL for index selection in their respective stages of query execution. For more information see the MySQL/MariaDB docs (link below).

table_name is the name of the table that the hints are for. By default, this will be the name of the table of the model that the QuerySet is for, however you can supply any other table that may be joined into the query (from e.g. select_related()). Be careful - there is no validation on the table name, and if it does not exist in the final query it will be ignored. Also it is injected raw into the resultant SQL, so you should not use user data otherwise it may open the potential for SQL injection.

Note that USE INDEX accepts no index names to mean ‘use no indexes’, i.e. table scans only.

Example usage:

# SELECT ... FROM `author` USE INDEX (`name_12345`) WHERE ...
>>> Author.objects.use_index("name_12345").filter(name="John")
# SELECT ... FROM `author` USE INDEX (`name_12345`, `name_age_678`) WHERE ...
>>> Author.objects.use_index("name_12345", "name_age_678").filter(name="John")
# SELECT ... FROM `author` USE INDEX FOR ORDER BY (`name_12345`) ... ORDER BY `name`
>>> Author.objects.use_index("name_12345", for_="ORDER BY").order_by("name")
# SELECT ... FROM `book` INNER JOIN `author` USE INDEX (`authbook`) ...
>>> Book.objects.select_related("author").use_index("authbook", table_name="author")

Docs: MySQL / MariaDB.

django_mysql.models.force_index(*index_names, for_=None)

Similar to the above use_index(), but adds a FORCE INDEX hint. Note that unlike use_index() you must supply at least one index name. For more information, see the MySQL/MariaDB docs.

django_mysql.models.ignore_index(*index_names, for_=None)

Similar to the above use_index(), but adds an IGNORE INDEX hint. Note that unlike use_index() you must supply at least one index name. For more information, see the MySQL/MariaDB docs.

‘Smart’ Iteration

Here’s a situation we’ve all been in - we screwed up, and now we need to fix the data. Let’s say we accidentally set the address of all authors without an address to “Nowhere”, rather than the blank string. How can we fix them??

The simplest way would be to run the following:

Author.objects.filter(address="Nowhere").update(address="")

Unfortunately with a lot of rows (‘a lot’ being dependent on your database server and level of traffic) this will stall other access to the table, since it will require MySQL to read all the rows and to hold write locks on them in a single query.

To solve this, we could try updating a chunk of authors at a time; such code tends to get ugly/complicated pretty quickly:

min_id = 0
max_id = 1000
biggest_author_id = Author.objects.order_by("-id")[0].id
while True:
    Author.objects.filter(id__gte=min_id, id__lte=...)
    # I'm not even going to type this all out, it's so much code

Here’s the solution to this boilerplate with added safety features - ‘smart’ iteration! There are two classes; one yields chunks of the given QuerySet, and the other yields the objects inside those chunks. Nearly every data update can be thought of in one of these two methods.

class django_mysql.models.SmartChunkedIterator(queryset, atomically=True, status_thresholds=None, pk_range=None, chunk_time=0.5, chunk_size=2, chunk_min=1, chunk_max=10000, report_progress=False, total=None)

Implements a smart iteration strategy over the given queryset. There is a method iter_smart_chunks that takes the same arguments on the QuerySetMixin so you can just:

bad_authors = Author.objects.filter(address="Nowhere")
for author_chunk in bad_authors.iter_smart_chunks():
    author_chunk.update(address="")

Iteration proceeds by yielding primary-key based slices of the queryset, and dynamically adjusting the size of the chunk to try and take chunk_time seconds. In between chunks, the wait_until_load_low() method of GlobalStatus is called to ensure the database is not under high load.

Warning

Because of the slicing by primary key, there are restrictions on what QuerySets you can use, and a ValueError will be raised if the queryset doesn’t meet that. Specifically, only QuerySets on models with integer-based primary keys, which are unsliced, and have no order_by will work.

There are a lot of arguments and the defaults have been picked hopefully sensibly, but please check for your case though!

queryset

The queryset to iterate over; if you’re calling via .iter_smart_chunks then you don’t need to set this since it’s the queryset you called it on.

atomically=True

If true, wraps each chunk in a transaction via django’s transaction.atomic(). Recommended for any write processing.

status_thresholds=None

A dict of status variables and their maximum tolerated values to be checked against after each chunk with wait_until_load_low().

When set to None, the default, GlobalStatus will use its default of {"Threads_running": 10}. Set to an empty dict to disable status checking - but this is not really recommended, as it can save you from locking up your site with an overly aggressive migration.

Using Threads_running is the most recommended variable to check against, and is copeid from the default behaviour of pt-online-schema-change. The default value of 10 threads is deliberately conservative to avoid locking small database servers. You should tweak it up based upon the live activity of your server - check the running thread count during normal traffic and add some overhead.

pk_range=None

Controls the primary key range to iterate over with slices. By default, with pk_range=None, the QuerySet will be searched for its minimum and maximum pk values before starting. On QuerySets that match few rows, or whose rows aren’t evenly distributed, this can still execute a long blocking table scan to find these two rows. You can remedy this by giving a value for pk_range:

• If set to 'all', the range will be the minimum and maximum PK values of the entire table, excluding any filters you have set up - that is, for Model.objects.all() for the given QuerySet’s model.

• If set to a 2-tuple, it will be unpacked and used as the minimum and maximum values respectively.

Note

The iterator determines the minimum and maximum at the start of iteration and does not update them whilst iterating, which is normally a safe assumption, since if you’re “fixing things” you probably aren’t creating any more bad data. If you do need to process every row then set pk_range to have a maximum far greater than what you expect would be reached by inserts that occur during iteration.

chunk_time=0.5

The time in seconds to aim for each chunk to take. The chunk size is dynamically adjusted to try and match this time, via a weighted average of the past and current speed of processing. The default and algorithm is taken from the analogous pt-online-schema-change flag –chunk-time.

chunk_size=2

The initial size of the chunk that will be used. As this will be dynamically scaled and can grow fairly quickly, the initial size of 2 should be appropriate for most use cases.

chunk_min=1

The minimum number of objects in a chunk. You do not normally need to tweak this since the dynamic scaling works very well, however it might be useful if your data has a lot of “holes” or if there are other constraints on your application.

chunk_max=10000

The maximum number of objects in a chunk, a kind of sanity bound. Acts to prevent harm in the case of iterating over a model with a large ‘hole’ in its primary key values, e.g. if only ids 1-10k and 100k-110k exist, then the chunk ‘slices’ could grow very large in between 10k and 100k since you’d be “processing” the non-existent objects 10k-100k very quickly.

report_progress=False

If set to true, display out a running counter and summary on sys.stdout. Useful for interactive use. The message looks like this:

AuthorSmartChunkedIterator processed 0/100000 objects (0.00%) in 0 chunks

And uses \r to erase itself when re-printing to avoid spamming your screen. At the end Finished! is printed on a new line.

total=None

By default the total number of objects to process will be calculated with approx_count(), with fall_back set to True. This count() query could potentially be big and slow.

total allows you to pass in the total number of objects for processing, if you can calculate in a cheaper way, for example if you have a read-replica to use.

class django_mysql.models.SmartIterator

A convenience subclass of SmartChunkedIterator that simply unpacks the chunks for you. Can be accessed via the iter_smart method of QuerySetMixin.

For example, rather than doing this:

bad_authors = Author.objects.filter(address="Nowhere")
for authors_chunk in bad_authors.iter_smart_chunks():
    for author in authors_chunk:
        author.send_apology_email()

You can do this:

bad_authors = Author.objects.filter(address="Nowhere")
for author in bad_authors.iter_smart():
    author.send_apology_email()

All the same arguments as SmartChunkedIterator are accepted.

class django_mysql.models.SmartPKRangeIterator

A subclass of SmartChunkedIterator that doesn’t return the chunk’s QuerySet but instead returns the start and end primary keys for the chunk. This may be useful when you want to iterate but the slices need to be used in a raw SQL query. Can be accessed via the iter_smart_pk_ranges method of QuerySetMixin.

For example, rather than doing this:

for authors_chunk in Author.objects.iter_smart_chunks():
    limits = author_chunk.aggregate(min_pk=Min("pk"), max_pk=Max("pk"))
    authors = Author.objects.raw(
        """
        SELECT name from app_author
        WHERE id >= %s AND id <= %s
    """,
        (limits["min_pk"], limits["max_pk"]),
    )
    # etc...

…you can do this:

for start_pk, end_pk in Author.objects.iter_smart_pk_ranges():
    authors = Author.objects.raw(
        """
        SELECT name from app_author
        WHERE id >= %s AND id < %s
    """,
        (start_pk, end_pk),
    )
    # etc...

In the first format we were forced to perform a dumb query to determine the primary key limits set by SmartChunkedIterator, due to the QuerySet not otherwise exposing this information.

Note

There is a subtle difference between the two versions. In the first the end boundary, max_pk, is a closed bound, whereas in the second, the end_pk from iter_smart_pk_ranges is an open bound. Thus the <= changes to a <.

All the same arguments as SmartChunkedIterator are accepted.

Integration with pt-visual-explain

How does MySQL really execute a query? The EXPLAIN statement (docs: MySQL / MariaDB), gives a description of the execution plan, and the pt-visual-explain tool can format this in an understandable tree.

This function is a shortcut to turn a QuerySet into its visual explanation, making it easy to gain a better understanding of what your queries really end up doing.

django_mysql.models.pt_visual_explain(display=True)

Call on a QuerySet to print its visual explanation, or with display=False to return it as a string. It prepends the SQL of the query with ‘EXPLAIN’ and passes it through the mysql and pt-visual-explain commands to get the output. You therefore need the MySQL client and Percona Toolkit installed where you run this.

Example:

>>> Author.objects.all().pt_visual_explain()
Table scan
rows           1020
+- Table
   table          myapp_author

Can also be imported as a standalone function if you want to use it on a QuerySet that does not have the QuerySetMixin added, e.g. for built-in Django models:

>>> from django_mysql.models import pt_visual_explain
>>> pt_visual_explain(User.objects.all())
Table scan
rows           1
+- Table
   table          auth_user