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Debugging MySQL Timeout Issues during Automated Test Execution in Python

๐Ÿ‘€ Views: 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ Answers: 1 ๐Ÿ“… Created: 2025-09-24
mysql pytest sqlalchemy Python

I've encountered a strange issue with I'm writing unit tests and During development of our automated testing suite, specifically using Pytest and SQLAlchemy, weโ€™ve stumbled upon persistent timeout issues with our MySQL database while executing tests. The tests involve creating and tearing down a test database with each run, which seems to lead to intermittent connection timeouts. Hereโ€™s the relevant snippet: ```python from sqlalchemy import create_engine from sqlalchemy.orm import sessionmaker DATABASE_URI = 'mysql+pymysql://user:password@localhost/test_db' engine = create_engine(DATABASE_URI, pool_pre_ping=True) Session = sessionmaker(bind=engine) session = Session() try: result = session.execute("SELECT * FROM some_table") print(result.fetchall()) finally: session.close() ``` In my current setup, weโ€™re using MySQL 8.0.23, and for some tests, the connection fails with the error message: `MySQL server has gone away`. To tackle this, I've attempted various configurations: 1. Increased the `wait_timeout` and `interactive_timeout` values in the MySQL configuration. 2. Implemented connection retry logic in the testing framework. 3. Set the `pool_pre_ping` flag to `True`, hoping it would help maintain the connection. Despite these adjustments, the timeout issue persists randomly across different test runs. Has anyone seen similar behavior? What are some potential solutions or best practices for handling MySQL connections in automated testing environments? Any insights on optimizing this setup would be greatly appreciated. This is happening in both development and production on Windows 11. Thanks for taking the time to read this! Cheers for any assistance!