How can I connect to MySQL in Python 3 on Windows?

There are currently a few options for using Python 3 with mysql:

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/mysql-connector-python

  • Officially supported by Oracle
  • Pure python
  • A little slow
  • Not compatible with MySQLdb

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pymysql

  • Pure python
  • Faster than mysql-connector
  • Almost completely compatible with MySQLdb, after calling pymysql.install_as_MySQLdb()

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/cymysql

  • fork of pymysql with optional C speedups

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/mysqlclient

  • Django's recommended library.
  • Friendly fork of the original MySQLdb, hopes to merge back some day
  • The fastest implementation, as it is C based.
  • The most compatible with MySQLdb, as it is a fork
  • Debian and Ubuntu use it to provide both python-mysqldb andpython3-mysqldb packages.

benchmarks here: https://github.com/methane/mysql-driver-benchmarks


You should probably use pymysql - Pure Python MySQL client instead.
It works with Python 3.x, and doesn't have any dependencies.

This pure Python MySQL client provides a DB-API to a MySQL database by talking directly to the server via the binary client/server protocol.

Example:

import pymysql
conn = pymysql.connect(host='127.0.0.1', unix_socket='/tmp/mysql.sock', user='root', passwd=None, db='mysql')
cur = conn.cursor()
cur.execute("SELECT Host,User FROM user")
for r in cur:
    print(r)
cur.close()
conn.close()