I am building a database interface using Python's peewee module. I am trying to figure out how to insert data into an existing database where I do not know the schema.
My idea is to use playhouse.reflection.Introspector to find out the database schema, then use that information to create class objects which can then be inserted into the existing database.
So far I've gotten to:
introspector = Introspector.from_database(database)
models = introspector.generate_models()
I'm don't know where to go from there.
1) Can I create database objects in this manner? What is the next step?
2) Is there an easier way to do this?
peewee includes an introspection tool called pwiz that can (basically) introspect a database and produce model definitions. It is run as a command line script and dumps the model definitions to stdout, so invokation is like any other unix tool. Here is an example from the docs:
python -m pwiz -e postgresql my_postgres_db > mymodels.py
From there edit mymodels.py to get what you need.
You could do this on the fly, but it would require a few steps and is hackish (not to mention pointless if you really don't know anything about the schema):
BUT
If you really don't know the schema to start with then you have no idea what the semantics of the database are anyway, which means whatever you find is literally meaningless. Unless you at least know some schema/table/column names you are hunting for (in which case you do know something about the schema) there isn't really much you can do with regard to inserting data (not in a sane way), though you could certainly dump data from the db. But if you just wanted a database dump then pg_dump would have been easier.
I suspect this is actually an X-Y problem. What problem is it you are trying to solve by using this technique? What effect is it supposed to achieve within the context of your system?