sqlx is a library which provides a set of extensions on go's standard
`database/sql` library. The sqlx versions of `sql.DB`, `sql.TX`, `sql.Stmt`,
et al. all leave the underlying interfaces untouched, so that their interfaces
are a superset on the standard ones. This makes it relatively painless to
integrate existing codebases using database/sql with sqlx.
Major additional concepts are:
* Marshal rows into structs (with embedded struct support), maps, and slices
* Named parameter support including prepared statements
*`Get` and `Select` to go quickly from query to struct/slice
*`LoadFile` for executing statements from a file
There is now some [fairly comprehensive documentation](http://jmoiron.github.io/sqlx/) for sqlx.
You can also read the usage below for a quick sample on how sqlx works, or check out the [API
documentation on godoc](http://godoc.org/github.com/jmoiron/sqlx).
## Recent Changes
The ability to use basic types as Select and Get destinations was added. This
is only valid when there is one column in the result set, and both functions
return an error if this isn't the case. This allows for much simpler patterns
of access for single column results:
```go
var count int
err := db.Get(&count, "SELECT count(*) FROM person;")
var names []string
err := db.Select(&names, "SELECT name FROM person;")
```
See the note on Scannability at the bottom of this README for some more info.
### Backwards Compatibility
There is no Go1-like promise of absolute stability, but I take the issue
seriously and will maintain the library in a compatible state unless vital
bugs prevent me from doing so. Since [#59](https://github.com/jmoiron/sqlx/issues/59) and [#60](https://github.com/jmoiron/sqlx/issues/60) necessitated
breaking behavior, a wider API cleanup was done at the time of fixing.
## install
go get github.com/jmoiron/sqlx
## issues
Row headers can be ambiguous (`SELECT 1 AS a, 2 AS a`), and the result of
`Columns()` can have duplicate names on queries like:
```sql
SELECT a.id, a.name, b.id, b.name FROM foos AS a JOIN foos AS b ON a.parent = b.id;
```
making a struct or map destination ambiguous. Use `AS` in your queries
to give rows distinct names, `rows.Scan` to scan them manually, or
`SliceScan` to get a slice of results.
## usage
Below is an example which shows some common use cases for sqlx. Check
[sqlx_test.go](https://github.com/jmoiron/sqlx/blob/master/sqlx_test.go) for more
usage.
```go
package main
import (
_ "github.com/lib/pq"
"database/sql"
"github.com/jmoiron/sqlx"
"log"
)
var schema = `
CREATE TABLE person (
first_name text,
last_name text,
email text
);
CREATE TABLE place (
country text,
city text NULL,
telcode integer
)`
type Person struct {
FirstName string `db:"first_name"`
LastName string `db:"last_name"`
Email string
}
type Place struct {
Country string
City sql.NullString
TelCode int
}
func main() {
// this connects & tries a simple 'SELECT 1', panics on error
Get and Select are able to take base types, so the following is now possible:
```go
var name string
db.Get(&name, "SELECT first_name FROM person WHERE id=$1", 10)
var ids []int64
db.Select(&ids, "SELECT id FROM person LIMIT 20;")
```
This can get complicated with destination types which are structs, like `sql.NullString`. Because of this, straightforward rules for *scannability* had to be developed. Iff something is "Scannable", then it is used directly in `rows.Scan`; if it's not, then the standard sqlx struct rules apply.
Something is scannable if any of the following are true:
* It is not a struct, ie. `reflect.ValueOf(v).Kind() != reflect.Struct`
* It implements the `sql.Scanner` interface
* It has no exported fields (eg. `time.Time`)
## embedded structs
Scan targets obey Go attribute rules directly, including nested embedded structs. Older versions of sqlx would attempt to also descend into non-embedded structs, but this is no longer supported.
Go makes *accessing* '[ambiguous selectors](http://play.golang.org/p/MGRxdjLaUc)' a compile time error, defining structs with ambiguous selectors is legal. Sqlx will decide which field to use on a struct based on a breadth first search of the struct and any structs it embeds, as specified by the order of the fields as accessible by `reflect`, which generally means in source-order. This means that sqlx chooses the outer-most, top-most matching name for targets, even when the selector might technically be ambiguous.
## scan safety
By default, scanning into structs requires the structs to have fields for all of the
columns in the query. This was done for a few reasons:
* A mistake in naming during development could lead you to believe that data is
being written to a field when actually it can't be found and it is being dropped
* This behavior mirrors the behavior of the Go compiler with respect to unused
variables
* Selecting more data than you need is wasteful (more data on the wire, more time
marshalling, etc)
Unlike Marshallers in the stdlib, the programmer scanning an sql result into a struct
will generally have a full understanding of what the underlying data model is *and*
full control over the SQL statement.
Despite this, there are use cases where it's convenient to be able to ignore unknown
columns. In most of these cases, you might be better off with `ScanSlice`, but where
you want to still use structs, there is now the `Unsafe` method. Its usage is most
