Question

Was hoping to use Django / db-api’s built in string excaping, but it looks like it doesn’t work for create database commands?

from django.db import connections
cursor = connections['dbadmin'].cursor()
cursor.execute('create database %s', ['foo']) 

Which fails with

DatabaseError: (1064, "You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ''foo'' at line 1")

Although a straight, unparameterized create database foo works fine.

That looks like a bug to me, right? drop database has a similar problem…

Answer 1

You cannot use parameters for metadata such as table or database names. This is a limitation of the underlying C library, not of DB-API.