sqltyper - Type your SQL queries!


SQL is a typed language, but most solutions for using an SQL database
from typed languages don't make use of that typing information in a
way that would actually help you catch bugs during development.

sqltyper takes raw PostgreSQL queries and generates TypeScript
functions that run those queries AND are typed correctly, based on the
database schema. This makes it possible for the TypeScript compiler to
find bugs in your code that interacts with an SQL database.

For example, given the following schema:

``sql
CREATE TABLE person (
name text NOT NULL,
age integer,
shoe_size integer
)
`

The following SQL query in find-persons.sql:

`sql
SELECT
initcap(name) as name_capitalized,
age,
shoe_size
FROM person
WHERE
name LIKE ${namePattern} AND
age > ${minimumAge}
`

Converts to find-persons.ts:

`typescript
import { ClientBase } from 'pg'

export function findPersons(
client: ClientBase,
params: {
namePattern: string
minimumAge: number
},
): Promise name_capitalized: string
age: number
shoe_size: number | null
}>> { ... }
`

sqltyper does this without actually executing your query, so it's
perfectly safe to use in any environment.




Installation

`
npm install --save pg
npm install --save-dev sqltyper
`

Or:

`
yarn add pg
yarn add --dev sqltyper
`

sqltyper generates TypeScript code, so it isn't needed on
application runtime. However, the generated TypeScript code uses
[node-postgres] to execute the queries, so pg is a required runtime
dependency.


[node-postgres]: https://node-postgres.com/




Tutorial

Assuming you have a TypeScrip app and a bunch of SQL queries, put them
in files in a single directory, like this:

`
src/
|-- app.ts
|-- ...
-- sqls/
|-- my-query.sql
-- other-query.sql
`

Run sqltyper on the sqls directory:

`
yarn sqltyper --database postgres://user:pass@host/dbname src/sqls

or npx sqltyper, or ./node_modules/.bin/sqltyper, ...


`

sqltyper connects to the PostgreSQL database you give in the
--database option, finds out the input and output types of each of
the SQL queries, and outputs the corresponding TypeScript functions in
the same directory.

You should now have the following files:
`
src/
|-- app.ts
|-- ...
-- sqls/
|-- index.ts
|-- my-query.sql
|-- my-query.ts
|-- other-query.sql
-- other-query.ts
`

Each .sql file got a .ts file next to it. Each .ts file exports
a single function, whose name is the .sql file name with the
extension removed and camelCased. Furthermore, it generates an
index.ts file that re-exports all these functions.

In app.ts, import the SQL query functions:

`
import * as sql from './sql'
`

And that's it! Now you can use sql.myQuery() and sql.otherQuery()
to run the queries in a type-safe manner.

These functions take a Client or Pool from [node-postgres] as the
first argument, and possible query parameters as the second parameter.

They will return one of the following, wrapped in a Promise:

- An array of result objects, with object keys corresponding to output
column names. Note that all of the output columns in your query must
have a unique name, because otherwise some of them would be not
accessible.

- A single result object or null if the query only ever returns zero
or one row (e.g. SELECT query with LIMIT 1).

- A number which denotes the number of affected rows (e.g. INSERT,
UPDATE or DELETE without a RETURNING clause).




CLI

`
sqltyper [options] DIRECTORY...
`

Generate TypeScript functions for SQL statements in all files in the
given directories. For each input file, the output file name is
generated by removing the file extension and appending .ts.

Each output file will export a single function whose name is a
camelCased version of the basename of the input file.

sqltyper connects to the database to infer the parameter and output
column types of each SQL statement. It does this without actually
executing the SQL queries, so it's safe to run against any database.

Options:

--database, -d

Database URI to connect to, e.g. -d postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/mydb.
If not given, uses the [connecting logic] of node-postgres that relies
on [libpq environment variables].

--ext, -e

File extensions to consider, e.g. -e sql,psql. Default: sql.

--verbose, -v

Give verbose output about problems with inferring statement
nullability. Default: false.

--watch, -w

Watch files and run the conversion when something changes. Default:
false.

--check, -c

Check whether all output files are up-to-date without actually
updating them. If they are, exit with status 0, otherwise exit with
status 1. Useful for CI or pre-commit hooks. Default: false.

--camel-case, -C

Column names are converted into camelCase in the returned rows. Default:
false.

--prettify, -p

Apply [prettier] to generated TypeScript files. [prettier] must be
installed and configured for your project. Default: false.

--index

Whether to generate and index.ts file that re-exports all the
generated functions. Default: true.

--pg-module

Where to import node-postgres from. Default: pg.

[connecting logic]: https://node-postgres.com/features/connecting
[libpq environment variables]: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/libpq-envars.html
[prettier]: https://prettier.io/




How does it work?

sqltyper connects to your database to look up the schema: which
types there are, which tables there are, what columns and constraints
the tables have, etc. The only queries it executes look up this
information from various pg_catalog.* tables.

First, it substitutes any ${paramName} strings with $1, $2, etc.

Then, it creates a prepared statement from the query, and then asks
PostgreSQL to describe the prepared statement. PostgreSQL will reply
with parameter types for $1, $2, etc., and columns types of the
result rows.

However, this is not enough! In SQL basically anything anywhere can be
NULL, so if sqltyper stopped here all the types would have to be
e.g. integer | null, string | null and so on. For this reason,
sqltyper also parses the SQL query with its built-in SQL parser and
then starts finding out which expressions can never be NULL. It
employs NOT NULL constraints, nullability guarantees of functions
and operators, WHERE clause expressions, etc. to rule out as many
possibilities of NULL as possible, and amends the original statement
description with this information.

It also uses the parsing result to find out the possible number of
results. For example, UPDATE, DELETE and INSERT queries without
a RETURNING clause will return the number of affected rows instead
of any columns. Furthermore, a SELECT query with LIMIT 1 will
return { ... } | null instead of Array<{ ... }>`.

Then, it outputs a TypeScript function that is correctly typed, and
when run, executes your query and converts input and output data
to/from PostgreSQL.

Prior art

The main motivator for sqltyper was [sqlτyped] by Joni Freeman. It
does more or less the same as sqltyper, but for Scala, and is designed
to be used with MySQL. It uses JDBC, and is implemented as a Scala
macro rather than an offline code generation tool.

[sqlτyped]: https://github.com/jonifreeman/sqltyped