If you’ve ever used Django, you might be familiar with Django Extensions Shell Plus. It allows you to execute $ ./manage.py shell_plus for a very handy iPython REPL with all your ORM models pre-imported. This snippet will allow us to accomplish the same with FastAPI or Flask.

The key is to use iPython’s embed feature to create the shell, and the SqlAlchemy class registry to auto import our models. Create a new file shell.py:

from IPython import embed

from app.database import Base

banner = 'Additional imports:\n'
from app.main import app
banner = f'{banner}from app.main import app\n'

for clzz in Base.registry._class_registry.values():
    if hasattr(clzz, '__tablename__'):
        globals()[clzz.__name__] = clzz
        import_string = f'from {clzz.__module__} import {clzz.__name__}\n'
        banner = banner + import_string

embed(colors='neutral', banner2=banner)

In this snippet, you will want to replace line 3 with the correct import path to your applications Base metadata class. I’ve also demonstrated how to add custom imports that might be handy: you’ll want to replace or remove lines 5-7 with the correct import path for your project’s “app” object.

Start it with python shell.py

And you should see something like this:

$ python shell.py
Python 3.9.1 (default, Jan  8 2021, 17:17:43)
Type 'copyright', 'credits' or 'license' for more information
IPython 7.19.0 -- An enhanced Interactive Python. Type '?' for help.

Additional imports:
from app.main import app
from app.sources.models import Source
from app.sources.models import Comment
from app.auth.models import User

In [1]:

In this example, the models Source, Comment, and User are available for me to use and query with normally.