---
title: "Proper handling of None in WHERE condition · Issue #109 · fast..."
description: "!https://github.com/fastapi/sqlmodel/issues/109#issuecomment-1046223225"
date: 2024-11-08
published: true
tags:
  - database
  - python
  - sqlmodel
  - thought
template: link
---


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SQLModel models ship with an `is_`, and `is_not` that you can use to compare to None without pesky linters complaining.

This comment summed it up quite well.

> I believe this is concerned entirely with SQLAlchemy, not with SQLModel, and has to do with the required semantics to construct a BinaryExpression object.
> Hero.age == None evaluates to a BinaryExpression object which is eventually used to construct the SQL query that the SQLAlchemy engine issues to your DBMS.
> Hero.age is None evaluates to False immediately, and not a BinaryExpression, which short-circuits the query no matter the value of age in a row.
> From a cursory search, it does not seem that the is operator can be overridden in Python. This could help explain why the only possibility is by using the == operator, which can be overridden.


so rather than using `Team.heros == None` we can use `Team.seros.is_(None)` which checks for itentity not equality.