Okay, what if we did something quite similar but quite different?
Selda “is a Haskell library for interacting with SQL-based relational databases” (PostgreSQL or SQLite). “The library was inspired by LINQ and Opaleye.”
Install selda
(0.5.2.0
released in 2022) and selda-postgresql
.
Enable OverloadedLabels
.
How to connect to a database
Create connection info:
connectionInfo :: PGConnectInfo
connectionInfo =
PGConnectInfo
{ pgHost = Hardcoded.host
, pgPort = Hardcoded.portNumber
, pgDatabase = Hardcoded.database
, pgUsername = Just Hardcoded.user
, pgPassword = Just Hardcoded.password
, pgSchema = Nothing
}
And use it with withPostgreSQL
:
withPostgreSQL connectionInfo $ do
doFoo
doBar
How to define tables
First, we declare normal types and derive SqlRow
, for example, for product:
data Product = Product
{ id :: ID Product
, label :: Text
, description :: Maybe Text
}
deriving (Generic, Show)
deriving anyclass (SqlRow)
Then, we use table to declare a table:
productTable :: Table Product
productTable = table "product" [#id :- autoPrimary]
We specify constraints by linking selectors of the table to the definitions. We use autoPrimary
for auto-incrementing primary keys, primary
for regular primary keys, and foreignKey
for foreign keys:
mappingTable :: Table ProductCategory
mappingTable =
table
"product_category"
[ #product_id :- foreignKey productTable #id
, #category_id :- foreignKey categoryTable #id
]
See the repo for the rest of the boilerplate.
How to modify data
We can use rawStm
from Database.Selda.Unsafe
to execute raw queries:
cleanUp :: SeldaM PG ()
cleanUp =
rawStm "truncate warehouse, product_category, product, category"
SeldaM
is an alias for SeldaT IO
, SeldaT
is a Selda computation — a concrete implementation (of MonadSelda
) with Selda SQL capabilities.
At the end we’ll turn it into IO
:
withPostgreSQL connectionInfo $ do
cleanUp
To insert data, we can use insert_
that doesn’t return anything, insert
that returns the number of inserted rows, and insertWithPK
that returns the primary key of the last inserted row.
insertStuff :: SeldaM PG ()
insertStuff = do
productId <-
insertWithPK
productTable
[ Product def "Wood Screw Kit 1" (Just "245-pieces")
, Product def "Wood Screw Kit 2" Nothing
]
liftIO $ putStrLn $ "Inserted product with id: " <> show productId
rows <-
insert
categoryTable
[Category def "Screws", Category def "Wood Screws", Category def "Concrete Screws"]
liftIO $ putStrLn $ "Inserted categories: " <> show rows
We use def
when we want to use the default value, which is the case with ids.
How to query data
We can get all the rows from the given table using select
:
selectProduct :: Query t (Row t Product)
selectProduct = select productTable
💡 Note that we can use
compile
fromDatabase.Selda.Debug
to print sql queries that will be executed.
And execute the query with query
:
queryData :: SeldaT PG IO ()
queryData = do
result1 <- query selectProduct
liftIO $ putStrLn $ "Query 1: " <> show result1
🤷 Somehow, here, Selda didn’t want to read/parse back the ids it just inserted:
elephants-exe: [SELDA BUG] fromSql: RowID column with non-int value: SqlInt32...
If we change the type from ID Foo
to Int32
, the select works, but then insert with auto-incremental primary keys and other functionality doesn’t 🤷
So let’s ignore this for now because other queries work fine.
We can select specific fields and narrow down the results:
select2 :: Query t (Col t Text :*: Col t (Maybe Text))
select2 = do
p <- selectProduct
restrict (p ! #label .== "Wood Screw Kit 2")
pure (p ! #label :*: p ! #description)
Query
is parameterized over a scope parameter t
, ensuring that queries are always well-scoped, but we don’t have to worry about it now.
We use !
with selectors to extract a column, restrict
to filter the rows, and .==
to compare for equality. A result is an inductive tuple — one or more values separated by the :*:
data constructor.
We can also use isIn
:
select3 = do
p <- selectProduct
restrict (p ! #label `isIn` ["Wood Screw Kit 2", "Wood Screw Kit 3"])
pure (p ! #label)
How to use transactions
We use transaction
:
insertWithTransaction :: SeldaT PG IO ()
insertWithTransaction = transaction $ do
productId <- insertWithPK productTable [Product def "Drywall Screws Set" (Just "8000pcs")]
categoryId <- insertWithPK categoryTable [Category def "Drywall Screws"]
insert_ mappingTable [ProductCategory productId categoryId]
insert_ warehouseTable [Warehouse def productId 10 def def]
liftIO $ putStrLn $ "Insert with transaction"
How to query using joins
We use restrict
and leftJoin
to query with joins:
join :: Query s (Col s Int32 :*: (Col s Text :*: (Col s (Maybe Text) :*: Col s (Coalesce (Maybe Text)))))
join = do
w <- select warehouseTable
p <- select productTable
restrict (w ! #product_id .== p ! #id)
pc <- leftJoin (\pc -> pc ! #product_id .== p ! #id) (select mappingTable)
c <- leftJoin (\c -> just (c ! #id) .== pc ? #category_id) (select categoryTable)
pure (w ! #quantity :*: p ! #label :*: p ! #description :*: c ? #label)
We use ?
to extract a column from the nullable row.
The generated query:
SELECT
"quantity_2",
"label_6",
"description_7",
"label_13_15"
FROM
(
SELECT
"id_12_14",
"label_13_15",
"category_id_9_11",
"label_6",
"description_7",
"quantity_2"
FROM
(
SELECT
"product_id_8_10",
"category_id_9_11",
"id_5",
"label_6",
"description_7",
"quantity_2"
FROM
(
SELECT
"id_5",
"label_6",
"description_7",
"product_id_1",
"quantity_2"
FROM
(
SELECT
"product_id" AS "product_id_1",
"quantity" AS "quantity_2"
FROM
"warehouse"
) AS q0,
(
SELECT
"id" AS "id_5",
"label" AS "label_6",
"description" AS "description_7"
FROM
"product"
) AS q1
WHERE
("product_id_1" = "id_5")
) AS q3
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT
"product_id_8" AS "product_id_8_10",
"category_id_9" AS "category_id_9_11"
FROM
(
SELECT
"product_id" AS "product_id_8",
"category_id" AS "category_id_9"
FROM
"product_category"
) AS q2
) AS q4 ON "product_id_8_10" = "id_5"
) AS q6
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT
"id_12" AS "id_12_14",
"label_13" AS "label_13_15"
FROM
(
SELECT
"id" AS "id_12",
"label" AS "label_13"
FROM
"product"
) AS q5
) AS q7 ON (
Cast("id_12_14" AS INT)
) = "category_id_9_11"
) AS q8
Errors
From Selda’s tutorial: “While the types keep queries nice and safe, Haskell's type errors can be a bit daunting even under the best circumstances.” In practice, type inference rarely needed guidance, and the compilation errors were relatively clear.
The only problem we’ve encountered was the mismatch of ID
and SqlInt32
.
All Selda functions may throw SeldaError
:
errors :: SeldaM PG ()
errors = do
insertDuplicateScrew
insertDuplicateScrew
`catch` (\(err :: SeldaError) -> liftIO $ putStrLn $ "Caught Selda Error: " <> displayException err)
where
insertDuplicateScrew = insert_ productTable [Product def "Duplicate screw" Nothing]
elephants-exe: SqlError "error executing query INSERT INTO \"product_category\" (\"product_id\", \"category_id\") VALUES ($1, $2)': ERROR: insert or update on table \"product_category\" violates foreign key constraint \"product_category_category_id_fkey\"\nDETAIL: Key (category_id)=(748) is not present in table \"category\".\n"
Resources
Selda comes with a simple overview and example. There is also a tutorial.
Migrations
The library has a Migrations
module for upgrading a table from one schema to another.
In summary
Selda allows us to write type-safe queries in a linear, natural style.
Depending on your experience and situation, you can use SeldaM straight, or you may need to get familiar with mtl, exceptions, lifting/unlifting IO, etc.
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