from __future__ import print_function import datetime from sqlalchemy import create_engine from sqlalchemy import Column, DateTime, Integer from sqlalchemy.ext.declarative import declarative_base from sqlalchemy.orm import sessionmaker # connect to an database: engine = create_engine('sqlite:///:memory:', echo=False) # declarative base class for our mapping: Base = declarative_base() # Session class is ORMs handle to the database: Session = sessionmaker(bind=engine) class Tester(Base): __tablename__ = 'tester' id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True) some = Column(Integer, default=0) last_update = Column(DateTime, default=datetime.datetime.utcnow, onupdate=datetime.datetime.utcnow) if __name__ == '__main__': # to have a conversation with our db create a Session instance: session = Session() # create tables in the database via the MetaData registy: Base.metadata.create_all(engine) t = Tester() session.add(t) session.commit()