SQLAlchemy substring is in string

I am trying to query a database for records that have a string field inside an input search string.

Something like this:

User.query.filter(User.name in search_string)

Of course that does not work since it is not a valid SQLAlchemy statement. This seems a simple problem but I really can’t find the right column operator.

I tried the in_ operator:

User.query.filter(User.name.in_(search_string)

But that of course is not working. What I need is a is_substring operator.

Answer

In SQL it would be

SELECT * FROM user 
WHERE 'search string' LIKE CONCAT('%', name, '%')

SQLAlchemy contains(other) produces the clause LIKE '%<other>%'

from sqlalchemy import literal

User.query.filter(literal(search_string).contains(User.name))