SQLAlchemy delete doesn't cascade

Question

My User model has a relationship to the Address model. I’ve specified that the relationship should cascade the delete operation. However, when I query and delete a user, I get an error that the address row is still referenced. How do I delete the user and the addresses?

class User(db.Model):
    id = db.Column(db.Integer, primary_key=True)
    addresses = db.relationship('Address', cascade='all,delete', backref='user')

class Address(db.Model):
    id = db.Column(db.Integer, primary_key=True)
    user_id = db.Column(db.Integer, db.ForeignKey(User.id))

db.session.query(User).filter(User.my_id==1).delete()

IntegrityError: (IntegrityError) update or delete on table "user" violates foreign key constraint "addresses_user_id_fkey" on table "address"
DETAIL:  Key (my_id)=(1) is still referenced from table "address".
 'DELETE FROM "user" WHERE "user".id = %(id_1)s' {'id_1': 1}

Asked By: AndroidDev

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Answer 1

You have the following…

db.session.query(User).filter(User.my_id==1).delete()

Note that after “filter”, you are still returned a Query object. Therefore, when you call delete(), you are calling delete() on the Query object (not the User object). This means you are doing a bulk delete (albeit probably with just a single row being deleted)

The documentation for the Query.delete() method that you are using says…

The method does not offer in-Python cascading of relationships – it is
assumed that ON DELETE CASCADE/SET NULL/etc. is configured for any
foreign key references which require it, otherwise the database may
emit an integrity violation if foreign key references are being
enforced.

As it says, running delete in this manner will ignore the Python cascade rules that you’ve set up. You probably wanted to do something like..

user = db.session.query(User).filter(User.my_id==1).first()
db.session.delete(user)

Otherwise, you may wish to look at setting up the cascade for your database as well.

Answered By: Mark Hildreth

SQLAlchemy delete doesn't cascade

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