How do I implement a null coalescing operator in SQLAlchemy?

Or how do I make this thing work?

I have an Interval object:

class Interval(Base):
    __tablename__ = 'intervals'
    id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
    start = Column(DateTime)
    end = Column(DateTime, nullable=True)
    task_id = Column(Integer, ForeignKey('tasks.id'))

@hybrid_property #used to just be @property
def hours_spent(self):
    end = self.end or datetime.datetime.now()
    return (end-start).total_seconds()/60/60

And a Task:

class Task(Base):
    __tablename__ = 'tasks'
    id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
    title = Column(String)
    intervals = relationship("Interval", backref="task")

@hybrid_property  # Also used to be just @property
def hours_spent(self):
    return sum(i.hours_spent for i in self.intervals)

Add all the typical setup code, of course.

Now when I try to do session.query(Task).filter(Task.hours_spent > 3).all()

I get NotImplementedError: <built-in function getitem> from the sum(i.hours_spent... line.

So I was looking at this part of the documentation and theorized that there might be some way that I can write something that will do what I want. This part also looks like it may be of use, and I'll be looking at it while waiting for an answer here ;)

SQLAlchemy is not smart enough to build SQL expression tree from these operands, you have to use explicit propname.expression decorator to provide it. But then comes another problem: there is no portable way to convert interval to hours in-database. You'd use TIMEDIFF in MySQL, EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM ... ) / 3600 in PostgreSQL etc. I suggest changing properties to return timedelta instead, and comparing apples to apples.

from sqlalchemy import select, func


class Interval(Base):
    ...

    @hybrid_property
    def time_spent(self):
        return (self.end or datetime.now()) - self.start

    @time_spent.expression
    def time_spent(cls):
        return func.coalesce(cls.end, func.current_timestamp()) - cls.start


class Task(Base):
    ...

    @hybrid_property
    def time_spent(self):
        return sum((i.time_spent for i in self.intervals), timedelta(0))

    @time_spent.expression
    def hours_spent(cls):
        return (select([func.sum(Interval.time_spent)])
            .where(cls.id==Interval.task_id)
            .label('time_spent'))

The final query is:

session.query(Task).filter(Task.time_spent > timedelta(hours=3)).all()

which translates to (on PostgreSQL backend):

SELECT task.id AS task_id, task.title AS task_title 
FROM task 
WHERE (SELECT sum(coalesce(interval."end", CURRENT_TIMESTAMP) - interval.start) AS sum_1 
FROM interval 
WHERE task.id = interval.task_id) > %(param_1)s