I have been running this custom query which works against Postgres db and Python:

from sqlalchemy import text, bindparam 
sql = text("""
                   select t.column1, t.column2
                        from table1 t
                        where t.column3 = :which_column"""
                              )
    
    sql_params = {'which_column': variable}
    sql_query = sql.bindparams(bindparam('which_column'))
    sql_response = session.execute(sql_query, sql_params)

However, when trying to use this query including ‘order by’ and ‘ASC’ or ‘DESC’ as new parameters, it fails:

sql = text("""
               select t.column1, t.column2
                    from table1 t
                    where t.column3 = :which_column
                    order by :order_by :sort""")

sql_params = {'which_column': variable,
               'order_by': variable2,
                'sort': variable3}                             }
sql_query = sql.bindparams(bindparam('which_column'),
            bindparam('order_by'),
            bindparam('sort'))


Error negotiating with database: (psycopg2.ProgrammingError) syntax error at or near "'asc'"

The problem is that the ‘order_by’ and ‘sort’ parameters are inserted into single quotes.

e.g.: order by ‘column1’ ‘asc’

My attempts using literal_column() and literal from sqlalchemy docs don’t work in this context.