SQLAlchemy-History

SQLAlchemy-History is a fork of SQLAlchemy-Continuum. It is an auditing extension that tracks the history of SQLAlchemy models.

Features

• Supports SQLAlchemy 2+ and Python 3.10+
• Tracks history for inserts, deletes, and updates
• Does not store updates which don't change anything
• Supports Alembic migrations
• Can revert objects data as well as all object relations at given transaction even if the object was deleted
• Transactions can be queried afterwards using SQLAlchemy select syntax
• Query for changed records at given transaction
• Temporal relationship reflection. Get the relationships of an object in that point in time.
• Supports async SQLAlchemy

Quickstart

uv pip install sqlalchemy-history

In order to make your models versioned you need two things:

1. Call make_versioned() before your models are defined.
2. Add __versioned__ to all models you wish to add versioning to

>>> from sqlalchemy_history import make_versioned
>>> make_versioned(user_cls=None)
>>> class Article(Base):
...    __versioned__ = {}
...    __tablename__ = 'article'
...    id = sa.Column(sa.Integer, primary_key=True, autoincrement=True)
...    name = sa.Column(sa.Unicode(255))
...    content = sa.Column(sa.UnicodeText)
>>> article = Article(name='Some article', content='Some content')
>>> session.add(article)
>>> session.commit()
'article has now one version stored in database'
>>> article.versions[0].name
'Some article'
>>> article.name = 'Updated name'
>>> session.commit()
>>> article.versions[1].name
'Updated name'
>>> article.versions[0].revert()
'lets revert back to first version'
>>> article.name
'Some article'

For completeness, below is a working example.

from sqlalchemy_history import make_versioned
from sqlalchemy import Column, Integer, Unicode, UnicodeText, create_engine
from sqlalchemy.orm import DeclarativeBase, create_session, configure_mappers

make_versioned(user_cls=None)


class Base(DeclarativeBase):
    pass


class Article(Base):
    __versioned__ = {}
    __tablename__ = "article"
    id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True, autoincrement=True)
    name = Column(Unicode(255))
    content = Column(UnicodeText)


configure_mappers()
engine = create_engine("sqlite://")
Base.metadata.create_all(engine)
session = create_session(bind=engine, autocommit=False)
article = Article(name="Some article", content="Some content")
session.add(article)
session.commit()
print(article.versions[0].name)  # 'Some article'
article.name = "Updated name"
session.commit()
print(article.versions[1].name)  # 'Updated name'
article.versions[0].revert()
print(article.name)  # 'Some article'

import asyncio

import sqlalchemy as sa
from sqlalchemy.ext.asyncio import async_sessionmaker, create_async_engine
from sqlalchemy.orm import DeclarativeBase, configure_mappers

from sqlalchemy_history import make_versioned

make_versioned(user_cls=None, options={"support_async": True})


class Base(DeclarativeBase):
    pass


class Article(Base):
    __versioned__ = {}
    __tablename__ = "article"
    id = sa.Column(sa.Integer, primary_key=True, autoincrement=True)
    name = sa.Column(sa.Unicode(255))
    content = sa.Column(sa.UnicodeText)


async def main():
    configure_mappers()

    engine = create_async_engine("sqlite+aiosqlite://")

    async with engine.begin() as conn:
        await conn.run_sync(Base.metadata.create_all)

    Session = async_sessionmaker(engine, expire_on_commit=False)

    async with Session() as session:
        article = Article(name="Some article", content="Some content")
        session.add(article)
        await session.commit()

        versions = (await session.scalars(article.versions.select())).all()
        print(versions[0].name)  # 'Some article'

        article.name = "Updated name"
        await session.commit()

        versions = (await session.scalars(article.versions.select())).all()
        print(versions[1].name)  # 'Updated name'

        versions[0].revert()
        await session.commit()
        print(article.name)  # 'Some article'

    await engine.dispose()


asyncio.run(main())

For more async querying and revert examples, see Async support.

Resources

• Documentation
• Issue Tracker
• Code

More information

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowly_changing_dimension
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_data_capture
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_Modeling
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_table
• https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Audit_trigger
• https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Audit_trigger_91plus
• http://kosalads.blogspot.fi/2014/06/implement-audit-functionality-in.html
• https://github.com/2ndQuadrant/pgaudit

Comparison

Primary reasons to create another library:

• Be future looking and support sqlalchemy 2.x
• Support multiple databases (sqlite, mysql, postgres, mssql, oracle)
• Focus on the history tracking and be as efficient as possible when doing it

We found multiple libraries which has an implementation of history tracking:

1. sqlalchemy-continuum
   • Does not support oracle, mssql
   • Feature filled making it difficult to maintain all plugins/extensions
2. flask-continuum
   • Thin wrapper on sqlalchemy-continuum specifically for flask
3. postgresql-audit
   • Supports only postgres
4. versionalchemy
   • Not updated in a while
   • No reverting capability, Relationship queries on history not available
5. django-simple-history
   • Uses django ORM, does not support sqlalchemy
6. sqlalchemy example versioning-objects
   • Simple example to demonstrate implementation - but very minimal