Problems using MySQL with AWS Lambda in Python

Question

I am trying to get up and running with AWS Lambda Python (beginner in Python btw) but having some problems with including MySQL dependency. I am trying to follow the instructions here on my Mac.

For step number 3, I am getting some problems with doing the command at the root of my project

sudo pip install MySQL-python -t /

Error:

Exception: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-1.5.6-py2.7.egg/pip/basecommand.py", line 122, in main status = self.run(options, args) File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-1.5.6-py2.7.egg/pip/commands/install.py", line 311, in run os.path.join(options.target_dir, item) File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/shutil.py", line 292, in move raise Error, "Destination path '%s' already exists" % real_dst Error: Destination path '/MySQL_python-1.2.5-py2.7.egg-info/MySQL_python-1.2.5-py2.7.egg-info' already exists

I end up writing my following lambda function (works fine on my Mac), which is:

import MySQLdb

def lambda_handler(event, context):
   # Open database connection
   db = MySQLdb.connect(...)

   # prepare a cursor object using cursor() method
   cursor = db.cursor()

   sql = "SELECT * FROM Users"

   try:
      # Execute the SQL command
      cursor.execute(sql)
      # Fetch all the rows in a list of lists.
      results = cursor.fetchall()
      for row in results:
         fname = row[0]
         lname = row[1]
         age = row[2]
         sex = row[3]
         income = row[4]
         # Now print fetched result
         print ("lname=%s" %(lname))
   except:
      print "Error: unable to fecth data"

   # disconnect from server
   db.close()

What I went on to do is go to /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages and copying over the the MySQLdb folders/files that were downloaded when I did sudo pip install MySQL-python (without -t /) (I'm sure I'm doing something wrong here), to my lambda project, and then zipped the content along with the lambda_function.py and uploaded to AWS Lambda.

Then I get:

Unable to import module 'lambda_function': No module named MySQLdb

Grateful for any help and suggestions!

EDIT

Was able to do make sudo pip install MySQL-python -t /pathToProject work (thanks for the help in the comments) but now I get this when runing the lambda function:

Unable to import module 'lambda_function': /var/task/_mysql.so: invalid ELF header

I know that if I work on a Linux box, then it should work fine (as suggested by some people), but I am wondering if I can make it work from an OS X box.

Answer 1

For a use case like Lambda you'll be a lot happier using a pure python implementation like PyMySQL.

It's a drop in replacement for MySQLdb that follows the Python Database API specification. For most things like triggered Lambda events it will be just as fast.

I've used it in production a lot and it works great.