Question

So here’s the line with the SQL query in it. How do I use strftime(‘%s’, ‘now’) without python trying to replace %s with a string… this is incredibly annoying.

Thanks

DBQuery.query('INSERT INTO test (Date, Entry) VALUES (strftime(''%ss'', ''now''), "%s")' %('%', cherrypy.request.params['username']), 'INSERT')

Answer 1

You can just escape the % by using two back to back, so put %%s in the string where you want it to become %s. For example:

>>> print '''strftime('%%s', 'now'), "%s"''' % "some value"
strftime('%s', 'now'), "some value"

Also, I don’t think your back to back single quotes are doing what you think they are. This will not leave a single quote in the string, it will just concatenate the two strings together, for example:

>>> 'aaa''bbb'
'aaabbb'

Instead you should use triple quoted strings or escape the single quote. End result might look something like this:

DBQuery.query('''INSERT INTO test (Date, Entry) VALUES (strftime('%%s', 'now'), "%s")''' % cherrypy.request.params['username'], 'INSERT')