from sqlalchemy import create_engine, MetaData from sqlalchemy.orm import scoped_session, sessionmaker from sqlalchemy.ext.declarative import declarative_base engine = create_engine('sqlite:////tmp/test.db', convert_unicode=True) db_session = scoped_session(sessionmaker(autocommit=False, autoflush=False, bind=engine)) Base = declarative_base() Base.query = db_session.query_property() metadata = MetaData() def init_db(): # import all modules here that might define models so that # they will be registered properly on the metadata. Otherwise # you will have to import them first before calling init_db() import backend.app.models.user import backend.app.models.lock metadata.create_all(bind=engine)