Elixir and SQLAlchemy

After my initial foray into SQLAlchemy I started the process of mapping my current object model onto database tables and came across issues with my custom, hand-rolled relationship classes. While I expect I could have shoehorned these into SQLAlchemy mappers I decided instead that I'd be better served with an object model that was slightly more integrated with the database structure.

Cue Elixir. Elixir is a thin, ActiveRecord style wrapper on top of SQLAlchemy. It provides some useful features (such as simple to use relationship objects, and polymorphic associations) and allows you to drop down into SQLAlchemy for those features that they haven't wrapped, such as AssociationProxy (for doing a relationship through another relationship). Elixir is the missing link in the stack I was building up, giving me a powerful ORM and database layer with a lovely declarative syntax for building up all the objects I needed.

It took me about a week to go from my old model, through SQLAlchemy and into Elixir but in doing so, I have avoided a whole mess of spaghetti code involved in writing my objects out to a database, obtained database independence, and forced myself to refactor out a lot of code that was proving less than suitable for my requirements. On top of that, I should be able to integrate my system into a pylons or django web application much more easily now than I could have a week ago. Now if only I could get a similar system for XML parsing and allow me to concentrate on the important tasks I still have to do :)