how to insert to a mysql table using mysaldb, where the table name is in a python variable?

Question

I'm using python-mysql db api to insert some values to a table where the table name is in a python variable. So I wrote the below code

DB_CURSOR.execute("""INSERT INTO %s (name,created_by,state,description,docs,admin_email,date_created) VALUES(%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s)""", (hosts_table, hostname, created_by, state, description, docroot, admin_email, date_created))

As you see the table name is in the hosts_table variable. The problem is mysqldb quotes the table name and i get a mysql error. It works fine when I literally use the table name. How can I get around this?

Answer 1

DB_CURSOR.execute("""INSERT INTO %s 
    (name,created_by,state,description,docs,admin_email,date_created) 
    VALUES(%%s,%%s,%%s,%%s,%%s,%%s,%%s)""" % hosts_table,
    (hostname, created_by, state, description, docroot, admin_email, date_created))

Note that the hosts_table variable is a single % sign, and all the other variables are two %% so they are ignored in the initial Python string interpolation, then change to a single % for the mysqldb part.

Try this in the Python prompt to see what I mean:

>>> '%%s %s' % 'x'
'%s x'