Those who want to use the open source Firebird database server with Python using SQLAlchemy need to provide a dialect that SQLAlchemy can use to communicate to the database, because Firebird is not among the included dialects.

This package provides a Firebird dialect for SQLAlchemy using the Python Database API 2.0 compliant support provided from either firebird-driver or fdb.

Installation

The pip command to install the sqlalchemy-firebird package is:

pip install sqlalchemy-firebird

If you are using Python 3.8+, installing sqlalchemy-firebird will automatically install SQLAlchemy 2.0+ and firebird-driver. This configuration can be used to access Firebird server versions 3 and up. If you need to access a Firebird version 2.5 server, just install fdb using pip:

pip install fdb

If you are using a version of Python less than 3.8, SQLAlchemy 1.4+ and fdb are automatically installed, which can only be used for Firebird server versions 2.5.9 and 3.0+.

Getting Started

The first thing you need when connecting your application to the database using SQLAlchemy is an engine object, obtained by calling create_engine with the appropriate parameters. This can be a connection string (also known as a database uniform resource identifier/locator, dburi or dburl for short), or the URL object returned by calling create from sqlalchemy.engine.URL.

The following information is needed to make the connection string:

• <driver_name> - which driver to use; 'firebird' to use firebird-driver, or 'fdb' to use the fdb driver
• <username> - Firebird default is 'sysdba'
• <password> - Firebird default is 'masterkey'
• <host> - the location of the database server
• <port> - Firebird default is '3050'
• <database_path> - location of the database file
• <charset> - character set used by the database file, Firebird default is UTF8
• <client_library_path> - path to the firebird client library file. Linux needs 'libfbclient.so', Windows uses fblient.dll. This is only needed when using the embedded server or a remotely installed server.

Connection Strings

A typical connection string for SQLAlchemy is dialect+driver://username:password@host:port/database.

The template for a Firebird connection string looks like this (using the information listed above):

firebird+<driver_name>://<username>:<password>@<host>:<port>/<database_path>[?charset=UTF8&key=value&key=value...]

Note the only differences between the Linux and Windows versions of the following example configuration strings is that the Linux paths begin with '//home/testuser' while the Windows paths begin with 'c:/':

• The simplest configuration string is for the Firebird server installed locally using the default port.

[Linux]
# Use the fdb driver (Python 3.6/3.7, or Firebird server 2.5.9)
firebird+fdb://sysdba:masterkey@localhost///home/testuser/projects/databases/my_project.fdb
# Use the firebird-driver driver (Python 3.8+, Firebird server 3.0 or greater)
firebird+firebird://sysdba:masterkey@localhost///home/testuser/projects/databases/my_project.fdb

[Windows]
# Use the fdb driver (Python 3.6/3.7, or Firebird server 2.5.9)
firebird+fdb://sysdba:masterkey@localhost/c:/projects/databases/my_project.fdb
# Use the firebird-driver driver (Python 3.8+, Firebird server 3.0 or greater)
firebird+firebird://sysdba:masterkey@localhost/c:/projects/databases/my_project.fdb

• Firebird server installed remotely using port 3040 and specifying the character set to use

[Linux]
# Use the fdb driver (Python 3.6/3.7, or Firebird server 2.5.9)
firebird+fdb://sysdba:masterkey@localhost:3040///home/testuser/databases/my_project.fdb?charset=UTF8&fb_library_name=//home/testuser/dbclient/lib/libfbclient.so
# Use the firebird-driver driver (Python 3.8+)
firebird+firebird://sysdba:masterkey@localhost:3040///home/testuser/databases/my_project.fdb?charset=UTF8&fb_client_library=//home/testuser/dbclient/lib/libfbclient.so

[Windows]
# Use the fdb driver (Python 3.6/3.7, or Firebird server 2.5.9)
firebird+fdb://sysdba:masterkey@localhost:3040/c:/projects/databases/my_project.fdb?charset=UTF8&fb_library_name=c:/projects/dbclient/fbclient.dll
# Use the firebird-driver driver (Python 3.8+)
firebird+firebird://sysdba:masterkey@localhost:3040/c:/projects/databases/my_project.fdb?charset=UTF8&fb_client_library=c:/projects/dbclient/fbclient.dll

• Firebird embedded server specifying the character set to use

[Linux]
# Use the fdb driver (Python 3.6/3.7, or Firebird server 2.5.9)
firebird+fdb://sysdba@///home/testuser/databases/my_project.fdb?charset=UTF8&fb_library_name=//home/testuser/dbserver/lib/libfbclient.so
# Use the firebird-driver driver (Python 3.8+)
firebird+firebird://sysdba@///home/testuser/databases/my_project.fdb?charset=UTF8&fb_client_library=//home/testuser/dbserver/lib/libfbclient.so

[Windows]
# Use the fdb driver (Python 3.6/3.7, or Firebird server 2.5.9)
firebird+fdb://sysdba@/c:/projects/databases/my_project.fdb?charset=UTF8&fb_library_name=c:/projects/dbserver/fbclient.dll
# Use the firebird-driver driver (Python 3.8+)
firebird+firebird://sysdba@/c:/projects/databases/my_project.fdb?charset=UTF8&fb_client_library=c:/projects/dbserver/fbclient.dll

How to use

For example, to connect to an embedded Firebird server using firebird-driver on Windows:

db_uri = "firebird+firebird://sysdba@/c:/projects/databases/my_project.fdb?charset=UTF8&fb_client_library=c:/projects/databases/fb40_svr/fbclient.dll"
from sqlalchemy import create_engine
engine = create_engine(db_uri, echo=True)

# force the engine to connect, revealing any problems with the connection string
with engine.begin():
    pass

Connecting to different types of Firebird servers, databases, or drivers is done simply by changing the db_uri string used in the call to create_engine.

Code of Conduct

As with SQLAlchemy, sqlalchemy-firebird places great emphasis on polite, thoughtful, and constructive communication between users and developers. We use the SQLAlchemy Code of Conduct.

License

sqlalchemy-firebird is distributed under the MIT license.