python sqlalchemy distinct column values

Assuming this is your model:

class MyTable(Base):
    __tablename__ = 'my_table'
    id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
    date = Column(DateTime)
    user = Column(String)
    # do not really care of columns other than `id` and `date`
    # important here is the fact that `id` is a PK

following are two ways to delete you data:

1. Find duplicates, mark them for deletion and commit the transaction
2. Create a single SQL query which will perform deletion on the database directly.

For both of them a helper sub-query will be used:

# helper subquery: find first row (by primary key) for each unique date
subq = (
    session.query(MyTable.date, func.min(MyTable.id).label("min_id"))
    .group_by(MyTable.date)
) .subquery('date_min_id')

Option-1: Find duplicates, mark them for deletion and commit the transaction

# query to find all duplicates
q_duplicates = (
    session
    .query(MyTable)
    .join(subq, and_(
        MyTable.date == subq.c.date,
        MyTable.id != subq.c.min_id)
    )
)

for x in q_duplicates:
    print("Will delete %s" % x)
    session.delete(x)
session.commit()

Option-2: Create a single SQL query which will perform deletion on the database directly

sq = (
    session
    .query(MyTable.id)
    .join(subq, and_(
        MyTable.date == subq.c.date,
        MyTable.id != subq.c.min_id)
    )
).subquery("subq")

dq = (
    session
    .query(MyTable)
    .filter(MyTable.id.in_(sq))
).delete(synchronize_session=False)

Inspired by the Find duplicate values in SQL table this might help you to select duplicate dates:

query = session.query(
    MyTable
).\
    having(func.count(MyTable.date) > 1).\
    group_by(MyTable.date).all()

If you only want to show unique dates; distinct on is what you might need

While I like the whole object oriented approache with SQLAlchemy, sometimes I find it easier to directly use some SQL. And since the records don't have a key, we need the row number (_ROWID_) to delete the targeted records and I don't think the API provides it.

So first we connect to the database:

from sqlalchemy import create_engine
db = create_engine(r'sqlite:///C:\temp\example.db')
eng = db.engine

Then to list all the records:

for row in eng.execute("SELECT * FROM TableA;") :
  print row

And to display all the duplicated records where the dates are identical:

for row in eng.execute("""
  SELECT * FROM {table}
  WHERE {field} IN (SELECT {field} FROM {table} GROUP BY {field} HAVING COUNT(*) > 1)
  ORDER BY {field};
  """.format(table="TableA", field="Date")) :
  print row

Now that we identified all the duplicates, they probably need to be fixed if the other fields are different:

eng.execute("UPDATE TableA SET NormalA=18, specialA=20 WHERE Date = '2016-18-12' ;");
eng.execute("UPDATE TableA SET NormalA=4,  specialA=8  WHERE Date = '2015-18-12' ;");

And finnally to keep the first inserted record and delete the most recent duplicated records :

print eng.execute("""
  DELETE FROM {table} 
  WHERE _ROWID_ NOT IN (SELECT MIN(_ROWID_) FROM {table} GROUP BY {field});
  """.format(table="TableA", field="Date")).rowcount

Or to keep the last inserted record and delete the other duplicated records :

print eng.execute("""
  DELETE FROM {table} 
  WHERE _ROWID_ NOT IN (SELECT MAX(_ROWID_) FROM {table} GROUP BY {field});
  """.format(table="TableA", field="Date")).rowcount