sqlalchemy foreign key relationship attributes

I have a User table and a Friend table. The Friend table holds two foreign keys both to my User table as well as a status field. I am trying to be able to call attributes from my User table on a Friend object. For example, I would love to be able to do something like, friend.name, or friend.email.

class User(Base):
    """ Holds user info """

    __tablename__ = 'user'
    id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
    name = Column(String(25), unique=True)
    email = Column(String(50), unique=True)
    password = Column(String(25))
    admin = Column(Boolean)

    # relationships
    friends = relationship('Friend', backref='Friend.friend_id',primaryjoin='User.id==Friend.user_id', lazy='dynamic')

class Friend(Base):
    __tablename__ = 'friend'

    user_id = Column(Integer, ForeignKey(User.id), primary_key=True)
    friend_id = Column(Integer, ForeignKey(User.id), primary_key=True)
    request_status = Column(Boolean)

When I get friend objects all I have is the 2 user_ids and i want to display all properties of each user so I can use that information in forms, etc. I am new to sqlalchemy - still trying to learn more advanced features. This is just a snippet from a larger Flask project and this feature is going to be for friend requests, etc. I've tried to look up association objects, etc, but I am having a hard with it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Solution 1:

First, if you're using flask-sqlalchemy, why are you using directly sqlalchemy instead of the Flask's db.Model?

I strongly reccomend to use flask-sqlalchemy extension since it leverages the sessions and some other neat things.

Creating a proxy convenience object is straightforward. Just add the relationship with it in the Friend class.

class Friend(Base):
    __tablename__ = 'friend'

    user_id = Column(Integer, ForeignKey(User.id), primary_key=True)
    friend_id = Column(Integer, ForeignKey(User.id), primary_key=True)
    request_status = Column(Boolean)

    user = relationship('User', foreign_keys='Friend.user_id')
    friend = relationship('User', foreign_keys='Friend.friend_id')

SQLAlchemy will take care of the rest and you can access the user object simply by:

name = friend.user.name

If you plan to use the user object every time you use the friend object specify lazy='joined' in the relationship. This way it loads both object in a single query.