What is Fluent ORM ?

As a Typescript developer at heart, I've always been accustomed to coming across a multitude of packages in the Node.js ecosystem, each one more incredible than the last, to satisfy my every desire.

No alternative in Dart

When I was learning the Dart language I was surprised to see, or rather not to have, a wide choice of packages fulfilling the role of an ORM. The only fascinating alternative is Prisma, an adaptation of the world-famous Prisma ORM for the Javascript language.

As a big fan of Adonis as I am, I didn't find the essence of the standards surrounding the database domain, such as migration management, enabling tables to be altered and evolved over time, or the concept of model, the representation of each table within its application.

It was with the aim of solidifying my knowledge in this field while offering a robust and reliable alternative to everyone that I designed Fluent : The model-based ORM for Dart.

Our philosophy

With a view to agnostic and cross-platform use, we've decided to free ourselves from the language's reflexion, so that you can still compile your applications to Javascript, AOT, JIT or as executables.

Example of use

In this example, we're going to create a table called articles, which would hypothetically contain a list of subjects with a wide variety of themes.

We won't go into detail here, as each step will be described in its own section.

import 'package:fluent_orm/fluent_orm.dart';

final class Article extends Model<Article> {
  Article(): super(properties: ['id', 'title', 'content'])
  
  int get id => properties.get('id');
  String get title => properties.get('title');
  String get content => properties.get('content');
}

final class Article1691342071 extends Schema {
  final String tableName = 'articles';

  @override
  Future<void> up () async {
    schema.createTable(tableName, (table) {
      table.increments('id');
      table.string('title').notNullable();
      table.text('content');
    });
  }

  @override
  Future<void> down () async {
    schema.dropTable(tableName);
  }
}

final articles = await Database.of(manager)
  .forModel<Article>()
  .where(column: 'id', value: 1)
  .all();

expect(articles, isA<List<Article>>());