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  3. Introduction to Databases in Python

Exercise

Engines and connection strings

Alright, it's time to create your first engine! An engine is just a common interface to a database, and the information it requires to connect to one is contained in a connection string, for example sqlite:///example.sqlite. Here, sqlite in sqlite:/// is the database driver, while example.sqlite is a SQLite file contained in the local directory.

You can learn a lot more about connection strings in the SQLAlchemy documentation.

Your job in this exercise is to create an engine that connects to a local SQLite file named census.sqlite. Then, print the names of the tables the engine contains using the .table_names() method. Note that when you just want to print the table names, you do not need to use engine.connect() after creating the engine.

Instructions

100 XP
  • Import create_engine from the sqlalchemy module.
  • Using the create_engine() function, create an engine for a local file named census.sqlite with sqlite as the driver. Be sure to enclose the connection string within quotation marks.
  • Print the output from the .table_names() method on the engine.