from sqlalchemy import create_engine from sqlalchemy import Column, Integer, String from sqlalchemy.orm import sessionmaker from sqlalchemy.ext.declarative import declarative_base engine = create_engine("sqlite:///:memory:", echo=True) Session = sessionmaker(bind=engine) Base = declarative_base() class Toaster(Base): __tablename__ = "toasters" id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True) name = Column(String) color = Column(String) def toaster_exists_bad(toaster_id): session = Session() return bool(session.query(Toaster).filter_by(id=toaster_id).first()) def toaster_exists_good(toaster_id): session = Session() query = session.query(Toaster).filter_by(id=toaster_id) return session.query(query.exists()).scalar() def main(): Base.metadata.create_all(engine) toaster_exists_bad(1) toaster_exists_good(2) if __name__ == "__main__": main()