fastapi/sqlmodel

SQLModel, SQL databases in Python, designed for simplicity, compatibility, and robustness.

Documentation: https://sqlmodel.tiangolo.com

Source Code: https://github.com/fastapi/sqlmodel

SQLModel is a library for interacting with SQL databases from Python code, with Python objects. It is designed to be intuitive, easy to use, highly compatible, and robust.

SQLModel is based on Python type annotations, and powered by Pydantic and SQLAlchemy.

The key features are:

• Intuitive to write: Great editor support. Completion everywhere. Less time debugging. Designed to be easy to use and learn. Less time reading docs.
• Easy to use: It has sensible defaults and does a lot of work underneath to simplify the code you write.
• Compatible: It is designed to be compatible with FastAPI, Pydantic, and SQLAlchemy.
• Extensible: You have all the power of SQLAlchemy and Pydantic underneath.
• Short: Minimize code duplication. A single type annotation does a lot of work. No need to duplicate models in SQLAlchemy and Pydantic.

SQLModel is designed to simplify interacting with SQL databases in FastAPI applications, it was created by the same author. 😁

It combines SQLAlchemy and Pydantic and tries to simplify the code you write as much as possible, allowing you to reduce the code duplication to a minimum, but while getting the best developer experience possible.

SQLModel is, in fact, a thin layer on top of Pydantic and SQLAlchemy, carefully designed to be compatible with both.

A recent and currently supported version of Python.

As SQLModel is based on Pydantic and SQLAlchemy, it requires them. They will be automatically installed when you install SQLModel.

First, install uv, and then add SQLModel to your project:

$ uv add sqlmodel
---> 100%

If you prefer to use pip, install sqlmodel inside a virtual environment. See the installation guide for the alternative steps.

For an introduction to databases, SQL, and everything else, see the SQLModel documentation.

Here's a quick example. ✨

Imagine you have a SQL table called hero with:

• id
• name
• secret_name
• age

And you want it to have this data:

Then you could create a SQLModel model like this:

from sqlmodel import Field, SQLModel


class Hero(SQLModel, table=True):
    id: int | None = Field(default=None, primary_key=True)
    name: str
    secret_name: str
    age: int | None = None

That class Hero is a SQLModel model, the equivalent of a SQL table in Python code.

And each of those class attributes is equivalent to each table column.

Then you could create each row of the table as an instance of the model:

hero_1 = Hero(name="Deadpond", secret_name="Dive Wilson")
hero_2 = Hero(name="Spider-Boy", secret_name="Pedro Parqueador")
hero_3 = Hero(name="Rusty-Man", secret_name="Tommy Sharp", age=48)

This way, you can use conventional Python code with classes and instances that represent tables and rows, and that way communicate with the SQL database.

Everything is designed for you to get the best developer experience possible, with the best editor support.

Including autocompletion:

And inline errors:

You can learn a lot more about SQLModel by quickly following the tutorial, but if you need a taste right now of how to put all that together and save to the database, you can do this:

from sqlmodel import Field, Session, SQLModel, create_engine


class Hero(SQLModel, table=True):
    id: int | None = Field(default=None, primary_key=True)
    name: str
    secret_name: str
    age: int | None = None


hero_1 = Hero(name="Deadpond", secret_name="Dive Wilson")
hero_2 = Hero(name="Spider-Boy", secret_name="Pedro Parqueador")
hero_3 = Hero(name="Rusty-Man", secret_name="Tommy Sharp", age=48)


engine = create_engine("sqlite:///database.db")


SQLModel.metadata.create_all(engine)

with Session(engine) as session:
    session.add(hero_1)
    session.add(hero_2)
    session.add(hero_3)
    session.commit()

That will save a SQLite database with the 3 heroes.

Then you could write queries to select from that same database, for example with:

from sqlmodel import Field, Session, SQLModel, create_engine, select


class Hero(SQLModel, table=True):
    id: int | None = Field(default=None, primary_key=True)
    name: str
    secret_name: str
    age: int | None = None


engine = create_engine("sqlite:///database.db")

with Session(engine) as session:
    statement = select(Hero).where(Hero.name == "Spider-Boy")
    hero = session.exec(statement).first()
    print(hero)

SQLModel was carefully designed to give you the best developer experience and editor support, even after selecting data from the database:

That class Hero is a SQLModel model.

But at the same time, ✨ it is a SQLAlchemy model ✨. So, you can combine it and use it with other SQLAlchemy models, or you could easily migrate applications with SQLAlchemy to SQLModel.

And at the same time, ✨ it is also a Pydantic model ✨. You can use inheritance with it to define all your data models while avoiding code duplication. That makes it very easy to use with FastAPI.

This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT license.