Central database connection script not working after using its function in other python scripts to execute queries

Question

I am new to Python and I have been working on a project which need to run some queries from Snowflake database. My approach here is to create a central .py script with a function connect_snowflake() that can be called in other scripts. The reason I am doing this is that once I have done my development on DEV environment, I don't want to go on changing credentials for TEST environment in multiple files.

Below is my Snowflake connection script named as pySnowflake_Connection.py,

import snowflake.connector

def connect_snowflake(user, password, account, warehouse, database, schema):
    conn = None  # Initialize connection variable
    try:
        conn = snowflake.connector.connect(
            user=user,
            password=password,
            account=account,
            warehouse=warehouse,
            database=database,
            schema=schema
        )
        print("✅ Connection to Snowflake successful!")

        # Execute a simple query to verify connection
        cur = conn.cursor()
        cur.execute("SELECT CURRENT_VERSION()")
        version = cur.fetchone()
        print(f"🔹 Snowflake Version: {version[0]}")

    except Exception as e:
        print(f"❌ Failed to connect to Snowflake: {e}")

# Replace with actual credentials
connect_snowflake(
    user="USER_DEV",
    password="xxxxxxxxxx",
    account="xxxxxxx.north-europe.azure",
    warehouse="xxxxxxxx_DEV_WH",
    database="xxxxxxxxx_DEV_DB",
    schema="xxxxxxxxxxxx"
)

Now that I have written this script it runs successfully individually & gives me output as below

✅ Connection to Snowflake successful!
� Snowflake Version: 9.3.3

Now here is my second script which is trying to execute a query to fetch some records from a table in Snowflake DB. It runs to success on connection but asks for credentials again. This is defeating the purpose of creating a central connection.

Below is my second script,

import snowflake.connector
from snowflake.connector import connect
import pandas as pd
from pySnowflake_Connection import connect_snowflake

connsnf = connect_snowflake()

table_query="select * from TABLE_DATA_STG"
#pd.read_sql_query(table_query,snowflake_connection)

connsnf.execute(table_query)
datafetch = connsnf.fetch_pandas_all()
#print(datafetch.to_string())
datafetch.to_csv('C:/xxxx/Project/PyDataLoad/TABLE_DATA_STG.csv',sep = '|',encoding='utf-8',doublequote=True)

When doing this, it still gives me output like below,

✅ Connection to Snowflake successful!
� Snowflake Version: 9.3.3
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:\xxxx\Project\PyDataLoad\pyImport_SNF_Data_2.py", line 6, in <module>
    connsnf = connect_snowflake()
              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
TypeError: connect_snowflake() missing 6 required positional arguments: 'user', 'password', 'account', 'warehouse', 'database', and 'schema'

The table has some 10,000 records & thus I am expecting the actual number. Once successful, I will be running simple select col1, col2... from STG_TABLE_1 queries. But it seems I am not getting output for this first query.

I wrote another script where snowflake.connector, its credentials & all are part of same script. This script with everything in one place works. But as said before, I want a centralised working script as I am going to write more such scripts & when migrating them over to new environment, I don't want to keep editing multiple files. Much hard it would be if I have to transfer my code to someone else & then need to keep making changes across multiple files.

I even tried the. env method, but with it didn't even connect to Snowflake.

Answer 1

You defined function as

def connect_snowflake(user, password, account, warehouse, database, schema)

so now you have to always execute it with all parameters

connsnf = connect_snowflake(user="USER_DEV", ..., ...)

But function would need also return conn to assign it to connsnf = ...

def connect_snowflake(user, password, account, warehouse, database, schema):
    # ... code ...

    return conn

---

If you don't want to repeate parameters then in pySnowflake_Connection put it in function without parameters

def default_connection():
    return connect_snowflake(
              user="USER_DEV",
              password="xxxxxxxxxx",
              account="xxxxxxx.north-europe.azure",
              warehouse="xxxxxxxx_DEV_WH",
              database="xxxxxxxxx_DEV_DB",
              schema="xxxxxxxxxxxx"
           )

And later use

from pySnowflake_Connection import default_connection

connsnf = default_connection()

---

If you plan to use conn in many files in the same project then better assign connection to global variable in pySnowflake_Connection

conn = connect_snowflake(
              user="USER_DEV",
              password="xxxxxxxxxx",
              account="xxxxxxx.north-europe.azure",
              warehouse="xxxxxxxx_DEV_WH",
              database="xxxxxxxxx_DEV_DB",
              schema="xxxxxxxxxxxx"
           )

and later import only this variable

from pySnowflake_Connection import conn

Answer 2

you are simply not passing it the required args when calling connect_snowflake

connsnf = connect_snowflake()