Amazon Aurora MySQL + Python

Ok, so this isn't the sexiest topic, but if you're completely stuck the way I was several times today, maybe you're happy you found this post.

Today I needed to spin up a database I want available to students at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and also colleagues at Quartz. I also want to connect to the database from my home and the school using Python.

Since we use Amazon's web services, and I wanted to show the students SQL, I decided to give the AWS Aurora system a whirl — specifically the MySQL-compatible version.

As with many things AWS, it was a bit of a slog to get set up ... and I've decided to jot it all down while it's fresh so I can remember how the heck I did it (and show my students).

After a few tries, here's how I finally got set up: