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MySQL Connector/Python 8.0 - A year in
Posted on May 3, 2019 by Johannes Schlüter
Category: Connectors / Languages
Tags: mysql-development, connector, connector-python, mysql-8-0, python, xdevapi

It’s been a year since MySQL 8.0 became GA and 8.0.16 has just been released. A good time to look at what happened with MySQL Connector/Python over the last few years.

pypi presence

When we created our connector we knew hat providing it via PyPI was important and we used PyPI as distribution channel. Later PEP 470 was published, which changed how packages are hosted and we introduced the C Extension, which required re-working the packaging. It took us a bit time to get all things right, but for a while we are now back on PyPI and you can get it not only from or downloads page, but also with a simple install using the pip tool:

$ pip install mysql-connector-python
Collecting mysql-connector-python
  Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/d5/f9/00cfdc1604fd262adbe814c432305c4e21bbb8951bbb774062125b04c31d/mysql_connector_python-8.0.16-cp35-cp35m-manylinux1_x86_64.whl (13.0MB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 13.0MB 2.0MB/s 
Collecting protobuf>=3.0.0 (from mysql-connector-python)
  Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/81/59/c7b0815a78fd641141f24a6ece878293eae6bf1fce40632a6ab9672346aa/protobuf-3.7.1-cp35-cp35m-manylinux1_x86_64.whl (1.2MB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 1.2MB 1.8MB/s 
Requirement already satisfied: setuptools in ./lib/python3.5/site-packages (from protobuf>=3.0.0->mysql-connector-python) (41.0.1)
Collecting six>=1.9 (from protobuf>=3.0.0->mysql-connector-python)
  Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/73/fb/00a976f728d0d1fecfe898238ce23f502a721c0ac0ecfedb80e0d88c64e9/six-1.12.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: six, protobuf, mysql-connector-python
Successfully installed mysql-connector-python-8.0.16 protobuf-3.7.1 six-1.12.0

After installation, which of course also works in a virtual environment, usage is just as it had been installed using the other packages, without hurdles as dependencies like protobuf are installed automatically:

$ python
Python 3.5.2 (default, Nov 23 2017, 16:37:01) 
[GCC 5.4.0 20160609] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import mysql.connector
>>> cnx = mysql.connector.connect(user='root', database='sys')
>>> cursor = cnx.cursor()
>>> cursor.execute("SHOW TABLES")
>>> for (table_name) in cursor:
...     print(table_name)
... 
('host_summary',)
('host_summary_by_file_io',)
('host_summary_by_file_io_type',)
....

Making the C extension default

Initially our Connector was written in 100% Python. This gives great portability to all platforms and all Python runtime implementations. However en- and decoding the network packages and doing all the related handling can take some time. To bring you the best performance we, some while ago, introduced the C Extension, which builds around libmysql and by using C can notably improve the performance. With 8.0 we took the big step and made it the default. Thus users now automatically benefit from the performance boost, without a change to the application. If however you want to use the pure python implementation just set the use_pure option to True and the old default is back. The pure Python version is still maintained for maximum compatibility and used automatically if the C extension can’t be loaded. If the C extension is available can be easily checked:

>>> mysql.connector.HAVE_CEXT
True

Introduction of X DevAPI and Document Store

A big change in all parts of MySQL 8.0 was the introduction of he MySQL Document Store, with a new network protocol and a new API. The MySQL Document Store allows easy access to JSON-style documents and CRUD access to tables directly from a more high-level API. Jesper gave a good introduction, so I won’t repeat it here. Of course you get the X DevAPI support as part of the PyPI package and of course the boost using the C extension is default as well.

EOL for MySQL Connector/Python 2

In January we have put the 2.1 series out of support to be able to to fully focus on 8.0. But don’t be afraid by the big jump in the version number. Version 8.0 is fully compatible. The only potential break is that we are defaulting now to the C extension as mentioned above. he only effect should be higher performance, but if that causes an issue you can go back to the pure Python version and please file a bug about why you need that.

More to come

Predictions are hard, especially about the future, but what I know for sue is, that there is a bright future for the MySQL Connector/Python. The main focus for the future is in three areas:

  • Making sure we give access to all the great current and upcoming features in the MySQL Server to Python users
  • Improve the X DevAPI to make writing new-style applications even more productive and simpler.
  • Improve integration into the Python ecosystem by continuing work on our Django integration and implementing different requests from the SQLAlchemy community.

Not really surprising goals, I guess. If you have any needs, please reach out to us!

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