Using an SQL expression to insert data with SQLAlchemy (and MySQL)

Question

I would like to be able to insert data into a MySQL database and have one or more of those columns the result of a MySQL function. For instance:

CREATE TABLE values (a varchar(255), b int, c date);
INSERT INTO table (a,b,c) values (null,2,NOW());

How do I do this in SQLAlchemy using the table metadata and db engine? Right now I create a dict of code called items and run:

connection.execute(table.insert().values(items))

But I don't know how to put NOW() into items.

Chris

Answer 1

ins = table.insert().values(a=None, b=2, c=func.now())
engine.execute(ins)