The Python Database API is described in PEP 249. MySQL has three prominent drivers that implement this API:
- MySQLdb is a native driver that has been developed and supported for over a decade by Andy Dustman.
- mysqlclient is a fork of
MySQLdbwhich notably supports Python 3 and can be used as a drop-in replacement for MySQLdb. At the time of this writing, this is the recommended choice for using MySQL with Django. - MySQL Connector/Python is a pure Python driver from Oracle that does not require the MySQL client library or any Python modules outside the standard library.
All these drivers are thread-safe and provide connection pooling. MySQLdb is the only one not supporting Python 3 currently.
In addition to a DB API driver, Django needs an adapter to access the database drivers from its ORM. Django provides an adapter for MySQLdb/mysqlclient while MySQL Connector/Python includes its own.
mysqlclient
Django requires mysqlclient 1.3.3 or later. Note that Python 3.2 is not supported. Except for the Python 3.3+ support, mysqlclient should mostly behave the same as MySQLDB.