How do I sort, group a query properly that returns a tuple of an orm object and a custom column? - sorting

Question

I am looking for a way to have a query that returns a tuple first sorted by a column, then grouped by another (in that order). Simply .sort_by().group_by() didn't appear to work. Now I tried the following, which made the return value go wrong (I just got the orm object, not the initial tuple), but read for yourself in detail:
Base scenario:
There is a query which queries for test orm objects linked from the test3 table through foreign keys.
This query also returns a column named linked that either contains true or false. It is originally ungrouped.
my_query = session.query(test_orm_object)
... lots of stuff like joining various things ...
add_column(..condition that either puts 'true' or 'false' into the column..)
So the original return value is a tuple (the orm object, and additionally the true/false column).
Now this query should be grouped for the test orm objects (so the test.id column), but before that, sorted by the linked column so entries with true are preferred during the grouping.
Assuming the current unsorted, ungrouped query is stored in my_query, my approach to achieve this was this:
# Get a sorted subquery
tmpquery = my_query.order_by(desc('linked')).subquery()
# Read the column out of the sub query
my_query = session.query(tmpquery).add_columns(getattr(tmpquery.c,'linked').label('linked'))
my_query = my_query.group_by(getattr(tmpquery.c, 'id')) # Group objects
The resulting SQL query when running this is (it looks fine to me btw - the subquery 'anon_1' is inside itself properly sorted, then fetched and its id aswell as the 'linked' column is extracted (amongst a few other columns SQLAlchemy wants to have apparently), and the result is properly grouped):
SELECT anon_1.id AS anon_1_id, anon_1.name AS anon_1_name, anon_1.fk_test3 AS anon_1_fk_test3, anon_1.linked AS anon_1_linked, anon_1.linked AS linked
FROM (
SELECT test.id AS id, test.name AS name, test.fk_test3 AS fk_test3, CASE WHEN (anon_2.id = 87799534) THEN 'true' ELSE 'false' END AS linked
FROM test LEFT OUTER JOIN (SELECT test3.id AS id, test3.fk_testvalue AS fk_testvalue
FROM test3)
AS anon_2 ON anon_2.fk_testvalue = test.id ORDER BY linked DESC
)
AS anon_1 GROUP BY anon_1.id
I tested it in phpmyadmin, where it gave me, as expected, the id column (for the orm object id), then the additional columns SQL_Alchemy seems to want there, and the linked column. So far, so good.
Now my expected return values would be, as they were from the original unsorted, ungrouped query:
A tuple: 'test' orm object (anon_1.id column), 'true'/'false' value (linked column)
The actual return value of the new sorted/grouped query is however (the original query DOES indeed return a touple before the code above is applied):
'test' orm object only
Why is that so and how can I fix it?
Excuse me if that approach turns out to be somewhat flawed.
What I actually want is, have the original query simply sorted, then grouped without touching the return values. As you can see above, my attempt was to 'restore' the additional return value again, but that didn't work. What should I do instead, if this approach is fundamentally wrong?
Explanation for the subquery use:
The point of the whole subquery is to force SQLAlchemy to execute this query separately as a first step.
I want to order the results first, and then group the ordered results. That seems to be hard to do properly in one step (when trying manually with SQL I had issues combining order and group by in one step as I wanted).
Therefore I don't simply order, group, but I order first, then subquery it to enforce that the order step is actually completed first, and then I group it.
Judging from manual PHPMyAdmin tests with the generated SQL, this seems to work fine. The actual problem is that the original query (which is now wrapped as the subquery you were confused about) had an added column, and now by wrapping it up as a subquery, that column is gone from the overall result. And my attempt to readd it to the outer wrapping failed.

Answer 1

It would be much better if you provided examples. I don't know if these columns are in separate tables or what not. Just looking at your first paragraph, I would do something like this:
a = session.query(Table1, Table2.column).\
join(Table2, Table1.foreign_key == Table2.id).\
filter(...).group_by(Table2.id).order_by(Table1.property.desc()).all()
I don't know exactly what you're trying to do since I need to look at your actual model, but it should look something like this with maybe the tables/objs flipped around or more filters.