I found a fix that makes that global workaround unnecessary:

• 472

Wrote about this in my weeknotes: https://simonwillison.net/2022/Mar/28/datasette-auth0/#new-features-as-documentation

So now this should solve your problem: ``` echo '[{"name": "notaword"}, {"name": "word"}] ' | python3 -m sqlite_utils insert listings.db listings - --convert ' import enchant d = enchant.Dict("en_US")

def convert(row): global d row["is_dictionary_word"] = d.check(row["name"]) ' ```

Now documented here: https://sqlite-utils.datasette.io/en/latest/cli.html#using-a-convert-function-to-execute-initialization

This works: ``` % sqlite-utils insert dogs.db dogs dogs.json --convert ' import random print("seeding") random.seed(10) print(random.random())

def convert(row): global random print(row) row["random_score"] = random.random() ' seeding 0.5714025946899135 {'id': 1, 'name': 'Cleo'} {'id': 2, 'name': 'Pancakes'} {'id': 3, 'name': 'New dog'} (sqlite-utils) sqlite-utils % sqlite-utils rows dogs.db dogs [{"id": 1, "name": "Cleo", "random_score": 0.4288890546751146}, {"id": 2, "name": "Pancakes", "random_score": 0.5780913011344704}, {"id": 3, "name": "New dog", "random_score": 0.20609823213950174}] `` Having to useglobal random` inside the function is frustrating but apparently necessary. https://stackoverflow.com/a/56552138/6083

Actually this doesn't work as I thought. This demo shows that the initialization code is run once per item, not a single time at the start of the run: ``` % sqlite-utils insert dogs.db dogs dogs.json --convert ' import random print("seeding") random.seed(10) print(random.random())

def convert(row): print(row) row["random_score"] = random.random() ' seeding 0.5714025946899135 seeding 0.5714025946899135 seeding 0.5714025946899135 seeding 0.5714025946899135 `` Also thatprint(row)` line is not being printed anywhere that gets to the console for some reason.

... my mistake, that happened because I changed this line in order to try to get local imports to work: python try: exec(code, globals, locals) return globals["convert"] except (AttributeError, SyntaxError, NameError, KeyError, TypeError): It should be locals["convert"]

That documentation is split across a few places. This is the only bit that talks about def convert() pattern right now:

• https://sqlite-utils.datasette.io/en/stable/cli.html#converting-data-in-columns

But that's for sqlite-utils convert - the documentation for sqlite-utils insert --convert at https://sqlite-utils.datasette.io/en/stable/cli.html#applying-conversions-while-inserting-data doesn't mention it.

Since both sqlite-utils convert and sqlite-utils insert --convert apply the same rules to the code, they should link to a shared explanation in the documentation.

Aha! This may be possible already: https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-utils/blob/396f80fcc60da8dd844577114f7920830a2e5403/sqlite_utils/utils.py#L311-L316

And yes, this does indeed work - you can do something like this:

``` echo '{"name": "harry"}' | sqlite-utils insert db.db people - --convert ' import time

Simulate something expensive

time.sleep(1)

def convert(row): row["upper"] = row["name"].upper() ' And after running that: sqlite-utils dump db.db BEGIN TRANSACTION; CREATE TABLE [people] ( [name] TEXT, [upper] TEXT ); INSERT INTO "people" VALUES('harry','HARRY'); COMMIT; ``` So this is a documentation issue - there's a trick for it but I didn't know what the trick was!

Here's how the _compile_code() mechanism works at the moment: https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-utils/blob/396f80fcc60da8dd844577114f7920830a2e5403/sqlite_utils/utils.py#L308-L342

At the end it does this: python return locals["fn"] So it's already building and then returning a function.

The question is if there's a sensible way to allow people to further customize that function by executing some code first, in a way that's easy to explain.

I can think of three ways forward:

• Figure out a pattern that gets that local file import workaround to work
• Add another option such as --convert-init that lets you pass code that will be executed once at the start
• Come up with a pattern where the --convert code can run some initialization code and then return a function which will be called against each value

I quite like the idea of that third option - I'm going to prototype it and see if I can work something out.

Yeah, this is WAY harder than it should be.

There's a clumsy workaround you could use which looks something like this: create a file my_enchant.py containing:

```python import enchant d = enchant.Dict("en_US")

def check(word): return d.check(word) `` Then runsqlite-utils` like this:

PYTHONPATH=. cat items.json | jq '.data' | sqlite-utils insert listings.db listings - --convert 'my_enchant.check(value)' --import my_enchant Except I tried that and it doesn't work! I don't know the right pattern for getting --import to work with modules in the same directory.

So yeah, this is definitely a big feature gap.