What's the proper SSL parameter to pass into sqlalchemy's create_engine?

Question

I'm having trouble figuring out the proper parameters for connecting to a Postgres database using Django on Heroku with Python 3.7.10 and sqlalchemy 1.3.23. I know that's not the latest release of sqlalchemy, but this started failing the other week when Python was updated from 3.7 so I'm puzzled as to what's going on. I'm finding sqlalchemy's documentation a little hard to navigate and it doesn't help that this stopped working when just Python was updated.

So basically in Python, the connection is being set in this line:

import records as records_client
DB_URL_FROM_ENV_VAR = 'postgresql+pg8000://user:password@host:5432/db?ssl=True'
db = records_client.Database(DB_URL_FROM_ENV_VAR)

And when I go to the implementation of Database, I get this:

class Database(object):
    """A Database connection."""

    def __init__(self, db_url=None, **kwargs):
        # If no db_url was provided, fallback to $DATABASE_URL.
        self.db_url = db_url or DATABASE_URL

        if not self.db_url:
            raise ValueError('You must provide a db_url.')

        self._engine = create_engine(self.db_url, **kwargs)

        # Connect to the database.
        self.db = self._engine.connect()
        self.open = True

That appears to be a part of sqlalchemy.

The error I get when I run the script is: TypeError: connect() got an unexpected keyword argument 'ssl'.

I've tried changing the parameter to ssl_mode and also sslmode since I've seen SO posts and issues posted with similar questions, but neither of those changes have done anything. I've also tried adding another parameter to the Database call like so: db = records_client.Database(DB_URL_FROM_ENV_VAR, connect_args={'sslmode':'require'}) but all to no avail.

How do I configure the database URL and/or the connection attempt with SSL to connect to the database?

Here's a full stack trace with the following settings:

DB_URL_FROM_ENV_VAR = 'postgresql+pg8000://user:password@host:5432'
db = records_client.Database(DB_URL_FROM_ENV_VAR, connect_args={'sslmode':'require'})


Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "appdir/manage.py", line 14, in <module>
    execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\django\core\management\__init__.py", line 381, in execute_from_command_line
    utility.execute()
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\django\core\management\__init__.py", line 375, in execute
    self.fetch_command(subcommand).run_from_argv(self.argv)
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\django\core\management\base.py", line 323, in run_from_argv
    self.execute(*args, **cmd_options)
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\django\core\management\base.py", line 364, in execute
    output = self.handle(*args, **options)
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\appdir\apps\etl\management\commands\load.py", line 118, in handle
    step.load(items=ds_items, period=period)
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\appdir\apps\etl\models\job.py", line 89, in load
    match_status = self.domain_source.load(*args, **kwargs)
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\appdir\apps\etl\models\domain.py", line 90, in load
    return self.load_profile.load(items=items, data=data, **kwargs)
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\appdir\apps\etl\models\load_source.py", line 99, in load
    db = records_client.Database(DB_URL_FROM_ENV_VAR, connect_args={'sslmode':'require'})
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\records.py", line 245, in __init__
    self.db = self._engine.connect()
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\engine\base.py", line 2263, in connect
    return self._connection_cls(self, **kwargs)
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\engine\base.py", line 104, in __init__
    else engine.raw_connection()
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\engine\base.py", line 2370, in raw_connection
    self.pool.unique_connection, _connection
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\engine\base.py", line 2336, in _wrap_pool_connect
    return fn()
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\pool\base.py", line 304, in unique_connection
    return _ConnectionFairy._checkout(self)
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\pool\base.py", line 778, in _checkout
    fairy = _ConnectionRecord.checkout(pool)
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\pool\base.py", line 495, in checkout
    rec = pool._do_get()
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\pool\impl.py", line 140, in _do_get
    self._dec_overflow()
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\util\langhelpers.py", line 70, in __exit__
    with_traceback=exc_tb,
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\util\compat.py", line 182, in raise_
    raise exception
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\pool\impl.py", line 137, in _do_get
    return self._create_connection()
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\pool\base.py", line 309, in _create_connection
    return _ConnectionRecord(self)
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\pool\base.py", line 440, in __init__
    self.__connect(first_connect_check=True)
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\pool\base.py", line 661, in __connect
    pool.logger.debug("Error on connect(): %s", e)
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\util\langhelpers.py", line 70, in __exit__
    with_traceback=exc_tb,
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\util\compat.py", line 182, in raise_
    raise exception
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\pool\base.py", line 656, in __connect
    connection = pool._invoke_creator(self)
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\engine\strategies.py", line 114, in connect
    return dialect.connect(*cargs, **cparams)
  File "C:\Users\user\Github\django-app\venv-dev\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy\engine\default.py", line 508, in connect
    return self.dbapi.connect(*cargs, **cparams)
TypeError: connect() got an unexpected keyword argument 'sslmode'