Django + PyMySQL throws "MySQL server has gone away" after a couple of hours

Question

I have a module in my Django 1.6 app (Python3) that runs like a daemon but it's throwing this error after a couple of hours running:

OperationalError: (2006, "MySQL server has gone away (BrokenPipeError(32, 'Broken pipe'))")

It seems that exist a flag in MySQL connection that autoreconnect called MYSQL_OPT_RECONNECT, should I set it? Where? I’m using PyMySQL connector (by running pymysql.install_as_MySQLdb() in the main __init__.py).

Answer 1

We have to catch the error when it is thrown, and call django.db.connection.close() to reconnect.

from django.db import connection
from django.db.utils import OperationalError
...
try:
    function_that_uses_database_connection()
except OperationalError:
    connection.close()
    function_that_uses_database_connection()

I did not found a way to make it automatic, though, but it did the job.