Factory method that creates an aware DateTime column (includes timezone info and automatically converts). Works with MySQL dialects, which only support naive datetime types.

sqlalchemy_aware_datetime.py

import datetime
from dateutil import tz
from sqlalchemy import types
from naive_aware import isAware, makeAware, makeNaive

def AwareDateTime(tz=None, localtz=tz.tzlocal()):
    if tz is None:
        tz = tz.tzutc()
    elif isinstance(tz, str):
        tz = tz.gettz(tz)
    
    class AwareDateTimeImpl(types.TypeDecorator):
        impl = types.DateTime
        
        def process_bind_param(self, value, dialect):
            """Value that will be persisted in the database."""
            if value is not None:
                if not isAware(value):
                    value = value.replace(tzinfo=localtz)
                return makeNaive(value.astimezone(tz))
        
        def process_result_value(self, value, dialect):
            """Value that is being retrieved from the database."""
            if value is not None:
                return value.replace(tzinfo=tz)
        
        def compare_values(self, x, y):
            x, y = [ makeAware(val or datetime.datetime.min) for val in (x, y) ]
            return x < y
    
    return AwareDateTimeImpl