Integrating SQL into our application

Converting our application to a SQL backend will be no small task. The application was built around the assumption of the CSV files, and although we've taken care to separate our concerns, many things are going to need to change.

Let's break down the steps we'll need to take:

• We'll need to create a new model to interface with the SQL database.
• Our Application class will need to use the SQL model, and may need to adjust some behaviors as a result.
• The record form will need to be reordered to prioritize our key fields, use the new lookup tables, and auto-populate using information in the database.
• The record list will need to be adjusted to work with the new data model and primary keys.

Let's get started!

Creating a new model

We'll start in models.py by importing psycopg2 and DictCursor:

# models.py
import psycopg2 as pg
from psycopg2.extras import DictCursor

...