Get the number of rows in table using SQLAlchemy

I am using SQLAlchemy in Python, and I want to know how to get the total number of rows in a column. I have variables defined:

engine = sqlalchemy.create_engine(url, ehco=False)
Session = sqlalchemy.orm.sessionmaker(bind=engine)
Session = session()
metadata = sqlalchemy.MetaData(engine)
Base = declarative_base(metadata=metadata)

# A class representing the shape_congress_districts_2012 table
class Congress(Base):
    __tablename__ = 'shape_congress_districts_2012'
    id = geoalchemy.Column(sqlalchemy.Integer, primary_key=True)
    name = geoalchemy.Column(sqlalchemy.Unicode)
    geom = geoalchemy.GeometryColumn(geoalchemy.Polygon(2))
    geom_simple = geoalchemy.GeometryColumn(geoalchemy.Polygon(2))
    area = geoalchemy.Column(sqlalchemy.Float)
    state_id = geoalchemy.Column(sqlalchemy.Integer)
    census_year = geoalchemy.Column(sqlalchemy.Date)

geoalchemy.GeometryDDL(Congress.__table__)

I want to determine the total number of rows in the table without having to wait a whole bunch of time querying the database. Currently, I have a bit of code:

rows = session.query(Congress).all()

Then I can access them from list, but this requires me to load everything into memory at once.

Solution 1:

This should work

rows = session.query(Congress).count()

EDIT: Another way related to my first try

from sqlalchemy import func
rows = session.query(func.count(Congress.id)).scalar()