simonw / simonw/sqlite-utils

Allow making m2m relation of a table to itself

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enhancement
Dominant language
Python
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Description

I am building a database, in which one of the tables has a many-to-many relationship to itself. As far as I can see, this is not (yet) possible using .m2m() in sqlite-utils. This may be a bit of a niche use case, so feel free to close this issue if you feel it would introduce too much complexity compared to the benefits.

Example: suppose I have a table of people, and I want to store the information that John and Mary have two children, Michael and Suzy. It would be neat if I could do something like this:

from sqlite_utils import Database

db = Database(memory=True)
db["people"].insert({"name": "John"}, pk="name").m2m(
    "people", [{"name": "Michael"}, {"name": "Suzy"}], m2m_table="parent_child", pk="name"
)
db["people"].insert({"name": "Mary"}, pk="name").m2m(
    "people", [{"name": "Michael"}, {"name": "Suzy"}], m2m_table="parent_child", pk="name"
)

But if I do that, the many-to-many table parent_child has only one column:

CREATE TABLE [parent_child] (
   [people_id] TEXT REFERENCES [people]([name]),
   PRIMARY KEY ([people_id], [people_id])
)

This could be solved by adding one or two keyword_arguments to .m2m(), e.g. .m2m(..., left_name=None, right_name=None) or .m2m(..., names=(None, None)).

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by tracing the Python .m2m() implementation and the schema it creates for the provided self-referential people example. Determine how the two sides of the relationship can receive distinct columns, then verify that both parent-child calls create the intended links in SQLite without collapsing the foreign keys.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python, sqlite
Domain
databases
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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