[Python] method of iterating over sqlalchemy model's defined columns?

I've been trying to figure out how to iterate over the list of columns defined in a SQLAlchemy model. I want it for writing some serialization and copy methods to a couple of models. I can't just iterate over the obj.__dict__ since it contains a lot of SA specific items.

Anyone know of a way to just get the id and desc names from the following?

class JobStatus(Base):
__tablename__ = 'jobstatus'

id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
desc = Column(Unicode(20))


In this small case I could easily create a:

def logme(self):
return {'id': self.id, 'desc': self.desc}


but I'd prefer something that auto-generates the dict (for larger objects).

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