Question: I'm building a WSGI web app and I have a MySQL database. I'm using MySQLdb, which provides cursors for executing statements and getting results. **What is the standard practice for getting and closing cursors?** In particular, how long should my cursors last? Should I get a new cursor for each transaction?

I believe you need to close the cursor before committing the connection. Is there any significant advantage to finding sets of transactions that don't require intermediate commits so that you don't have to get new cursors for each transaction? Is there a lot of overhead for getting new cursors, or is it just not a big deal?

Answer: 
I think you'll be better off trying to use one cursor for all of your executions, and close it at the end of your code. It's easier to work with, and it might have efficiency benefits as well (don't quote me on that one).

```
conn = MySQLdb.connect("host","user","pass","database")
cursor = conn.cursor()
cursor.execute("somestuff")
results = cursor.fetchall()
..do stuff with results
cursor.execute("someotherstuff")
results2 = cursor.fetchall()
..do stuff with results2
cursor.close()

```

The point is that you can store the results of a cursor's execution in another variable, thereby freeing your cursor to make a second execution. You run into problems this way only if you're using fetchone(), and need to make a second cursor execution before you've iterated through all results from the first query.

Otherwise, I'd say just close your cursors as soon as you're done getting all of the data out of them. That way you don't have to worry about tying up loose ends later in your code.
I suggest to do it like php and mysql. Start i at the beginning of your code before printing of the first data. So if you get a connect error you can display a `50x`(Don't remember what internal error is) error message. And keep it open for the whole session and close it when you know you wont need it anymore.