Difference between filter and filter_by in SQLAlchemy

filter_by is used for simple queries on the column names using regular kwargs, like

db.users.filter_by(name='Joe')

The same can be accomplished with filter, not using kwargs, but instead using the '==' equality operator, which has been overloaded on the db.users.name object:

db.users.filter(db.users.name=='Joe')

You can also write more powerful queries using filter, such as expressions like:

db.users.filter(or_(db.users.name=='Ryan', db.users.country=='England'))

We actually had these merged together originally, i.e. there was a "filter"-like method that accepted *args and **kwargs, where you could pass a SQL expression or keyword arguments (or both). I actually find that a lot more convenient, but people were always confused by it, since they're usually still getting over the difference between column == expression and keyword = expression. So we split them up.