How Can I Efficiently Retrieve a Single Result from a SQL Query in Python?

Python and SQL query: Efficiently obtain a single result

When using SQL queries in Python, sometimes you only need to retrieve a single result instead of looping through multiple rows. Here's how to do this elegantly and efficiently.

For example, consider the following query, which gets the maximum value in a table:

conn = sqlite3.connect('db_path.db')
cursor = conn.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT MAX(value) FROM table")

The traditional method requires using nested loops to obtain the results, as shown below:

for row in cursor:
    for elem in row:
        maxVal = elem

However, this method can be cumbersome. A better approach is to use cursor.fetchone(), which returns a tuple containing a single row:

maxVal = cursor.fetchone()[0]

If there are no results, fetchone() will return None, so you may want to check this before accessing the value. This method is concise and efficient, making it an excellent choice for retrieving individual results from SQL queries in Python.

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