Escaping strings with python mysql.connector
The answer from infrared is the best approach.
But, if you really need to escape some arbitrary string, you can do this (before 2.1.6):
db = mysql.connector.connect(......)
new_str = db.converter.escape('string to be escaped')
Newer versions (use lowlevel C-API):
db = mysql.connector.connect(......)
new_str = db._cmysql.escape_string('string to be escaped')
Another option is to use mariadb python connector (pip install mariadb).
db = mariadb.connector(....)
new_str = db.escape_string("quote ' this")
Since mysql.connector is DB API v2.0 compliant, you do not need to escape the data yourself, it does it automatically for you.