CosmosDB Python get multiple items

I’m using the CosmosDB noSQL API and I feel like I’m not doing it right. The methods in the container class all return these iterator objects, which only have one method: next().

I need to get a list of records out of my container, and my only thought is to do this:

def to_list(iterator):
    list = []
    for i in range(0, 99):
        try:
            list.append(iterator.next())
        except:
            break
    return list

This works, but it feels bad. Is this going to be a performance problem? Does the Iterator class actually have all of my data in it? Like if I do the above with an iterator I get back, am I making 1 query to cosmos or 100?

I found this article which is using the methods in azure.cosmos.cosmos_client instead, but you still end up looping over everything. Is this normal, should I be using sqlalchemy or something instead?

What’s best practice for how to talk to CosmosDB using python?

>Solution :

If you’re trying to read all items in a container you can use this method.

item_list = list(container.read_all_items(max_item_count=10))

and this for a query.

items = list(container.query_items(
        query="SELECT * FROM r WHERE r.name=@name",
        parameters=[
            { "name":"@name", "value": "Mark" }
        ],
        enable_cross_partition_query=True
    ))