Easy Python: multi-threading MySQL queries

There are many times when writing an application that single threaded database operations are simply too slow. In these cases it’s a matter of course that you’ll use multi-threading or forking to spawn secondary processes to handle the database actions. In this simple example for Python multi-threading you’ll see the how simple it is to improve the performance of your python app.

#!/usr/bin/python
## DATE: 2010-08-30
## AUTHOR: Matt Reid
## WEBSITE: http://themattreid.com
## LICENSE: BSD http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php
## Copyright 2010-present Matt Reid

from __future__ import division
from socket import gethostname;
import threading
import sys
import os
import MySQLdb

class threader(threading.Thread):
    def __init__(self,method):
        threading.Thread.__init__(self)
        self.tx =
        self.method = method
    def run(self):
        run_insert()

def run_insert():
    sql = "INSERT INTO table (`id`,`A`,`B`,`C`) VALUES (NULL,'0','0','0');")
        try:
            cursor.execute(sql)
            db.commit()
        except:
            print "insert failed"

def init_thread(): backgrounds = []
    for db in connections:
       logger("Spawning thread: %s"%(db),"d")
       quant = tx / THREADS
       background = threader(method,quant,db)        
       background.start()
       backgrounds.append(background)
    for background in backgrounds:
       background.join()

def main():
    try:
        init_thread()
    except:
        print "failed to initiate threads"

    sys.exit(0)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    mysql_host = "localhost" #default localhost
    mysql_pass = "pass" #default dbbench
    mysql_user = "user" #default dbbench
    mysql_port = 3306 #default 3306
    mysql_db = "schema" #default dbbench
    threads = 4 #must be INT not STR #create connection pool

    connections = []
    for thread in range(THREADS):
      try:
       connections.append(MySQLdb.connect(host=mysql_host, user=mysql_user, passwd=mysql_pass, db=mysql_db, port=mysql_port))
      except MySQLdb.Error, e:
       print "Error %d: %s"%(e.args[0], e.args[1])
       sys.exit (1)

    main()