How to autoimport module in flask-migrate migration

Question

My flask project uses sqlalchemy_utils in some of its model definitions, which causes migration errors like:

NameError: global name 'sqlalchemy_utils' is not defined

due to this package not being imported in the migration files.

I'd like to have flask-migrate / alembic autogenerate the lines importing this package into the migration files, how do I achieve this?

I've looked at alembic.ini and migrations/env.py - but it's not obvious to me what is the right way / if it's possible at all.

Answer 1

The most straightforward way is to modify the template to include that import.

script.py.mako:

...
from alembic import op
import sqlalchemy as sa
import sqlalchemy_utils
${imports if imports else ''}
...

---

If you have multiple modules that provide custom types, you can use the strategy described in the docs. Create a module in your project that imports the different modules, then set that as the prefix Alembic should use for user types.

/myapp/migration_types.py:

from sqlalchemy_utils import *
from myapp.custom_model_type import MyType

script.py.mako:

...
from myapp import migration_types
...

env.py:

...
def run_migrations_online():
    ...
    context.configure(
        ...
        user_module_prefix='migration_types.',
        ...
    )
...