Sequelize

The Sequelize library provides easy access to MySQL, SQLite or PostgreSQL databases by mapping database entries to objects and vice versa. To put it in a nutshell... it's an ORM (Object-Relational-Mapper). The library is written entirely in JavaScript and can be used in the Node.JS environment.

Important Notes

1.6.0

We changed the way timestamps are handled. From v1.6.0 on timestamps are stored and loaded as UTC.
Support for synchronous migrations has been dropped. up and down methods in migrations do have a third parameter which is the callback parameter. Pass an error or an error message as first parameter to the callback if something went wrong in the migration.

Blogposts/Changes

v1.6.0 Eager loading, support for enums, decimals and bigint, performance improvements …
v1.4.1: deprecation of node < 0.6, logging customization, ...
v1.4.0: postgresql, connection pooling, ...
v1.3.0: migrations, cross-database, validations, new listener notation, ...
v1.2.1: changes some defaults and some interfaces
v1.0.0: complete rewrite

Features

Schema definition
Schema synchronization/dropping
Easy definition of class/instance methods
Instance saving/updating/dropping
Asynchronous library
Associations
Importing definitions from single files

Documentation and Updates

You can find the documentation and announcements of updates on the project's website. If you want to know about latest development and releases, follow me on Twitter. Also make sure to take a look at the examples in the repository. The website will contain them soon, as well.

Documentation
Twitter
IRC
Google Groups
XING (pretty much inactive, but you might want to name it on your profile)

Running Examples

Instructions for running samples are located in the example directory. Try these samples in a live sandbox environment:

Roadmap

A very basic roadmap. Chances aren't too bad, that not mentioned things are implemented as well. Don't panic :)

1.7.0

~~Check if lodash is a proper alternative to current underscore usage.~~
Transactions
Support for update of tables without primary key
MariaDB support
~~Support for update and delete calls for whole tables without previous loading of instances~~ Implemented in #569 thanks to @optiltude
Eager loading of nested associations #388
Model#delete
~~Validate a model before it gets saved.~~ Implemented in #601, thanks to @durango
Move validation of enum attribute value to validate method
BLOB #99
~~Support for foreign keys~~ Implemented in #595, thanks to @optilude

1.7.x

Complete support for non-id primary keys

1.8.0

API sugar (like Model.select().where().group().include().all())
Schema dumping
~~enum support~~
attributes / values of a dao instance should be scoped

2.0.0

~~save datetimes in UTC~~
encapsulate attributes if a dao inside the attributes property
~~add getters and setters for dao~~ Implemented in #538, thanks to iamjochem
add proper error message everywhere
refactor validate() output data structure, separating field-specific errors from general model validator errors (i.e. {fields: {field1: ['field1error1']}, model: ['modelError1']} or similar)

Collaboration 2.0

I'm glad to get pull request if any functionality is missing or something is buggy. But please ... run the tests before you send me the pull request.

Still interested? Coolio! Here is how to get started:

1. Prepare your environment

Here comes a little surprise: You need Node.JS. In order to be a productive developer, I would recommend the latest v0.8. Also I usually recommend NVM.

Once Node.JS is installed on your computer, you will also have access to the lovely Node Package Manager (NPM).

2. Database... Come to me!

First class citizen of Sequelize was MySQL. Over time, Sequelize began to become compatible to SQLite and PostgreSQL. In order to provide a fully featured pull request, you would most likely want to install of them. Give it a try, it's not that hard.

If you are too lazy or just don't know how to get this work, feel free to join the IRC channel (freenode@#sequelizejs).

For MySQL and PostgreSQL you'll need to create a DB called sequelize_test. For MySQL this would look like this:

$ echo "CREATE DATABASE sequelize_test;" | mysql -uroot

CLEVER NOTE: your local MySQL install must be with username root without password. If you want to customize that just hack in the tests, but make sure to don't commit your credentials, we don't want to expose your personal data in sequelize codebase ;)

AND ONE LAST THING: Once npm install worked for you (see below), you'll get SQLite tests for free :)

3. Install the dependencies

Just "cd" into sequelize directory and run npm install, see an example below:

$ cd path/to/sequelize
$ npm install

4. Run the tests

Right now, the test base is split into the spec folder (which contains the lovely BusterJS tests) and the spec-jasmine folder (which contains the ugly and awkward node-jasmine based tests). A main goal is to get rid of the jasmine tests!

As you might haven't installed all of the supported SQL dialects, here is how to run the test suites for your development environment:

$ # run all tests at once:
$ npm test

$ # run only the jasmine tests (for all dialects):
$ npm run test-jasmine

$ # run all of the buster specs (for all dialects):
$ npm run test-buster

$ # run the buster specs for mysql:
$ npm run test-buster-mysql

$ # run the buster specs for sqlite:
$ npm run test-buster-sqlite

$ # run the buster specs for postgresql:
$ npm run test-buster-postgres

5. That's all

Just commit and send pull requests. Happy hacking and thank you for contributing. Ah and one last thing: If you think you deserve it, feel free to add yourself to the package.json. Also I always look for projects which are using sequelize. If you have one of them, drop me a line!

6. Some words about coding style

As people are regularly complaining about missing semi-colons and strangely formatted things, I just want to explain the way I code JavaScript (including Sequelize ... obviously). I won't reject any pull-request because of having a different code style than me but it would be good to have a consistent way of coding in the whole project. Here are my rules of thumb:

No semi-colons. Where possible I try to avoid semi-colons. Please don't discuss this topic with me. Thanks.
Curly braces for single line if blocks. I always add curly braces to if blocks. Same for loops and other places.
Spacing. Indentation = 2 spaces. Also I add a lot of spaces where possible. See below.
Anonymous functions over names functions. Usually I declare a function and assign it to a variable: var foo = function() {}
Variable declarations. If multiple variables are defined, I use a leading comma for separation.
Camelcased variable names. No underscores.
Make sure that key is in objects when iterating over it. See below.

6.1. Spaces

Use spaces when defining functions.

function(arg1, arg2, arg3) {
  return 1
}

Use spaces for if statements.

if (condition) {
  // do something
} else {
  // something else
}

6.2. Variable declarations

var num  = 1
  , user = new User()
  , date = new Date()

6.3. For-In-loops

for (var key in obj) {
  if (obj.hasOwnProperty(key)) {
    console.log(obj[key])
  }
}

6.4. JSHint options

{
  "camelcase": true,
  "curly": true,
  "forin": true,
  "indent": 2,
  "unused": true,
  "asi": true,
  "evil": false,
  "laxcomma": true
}

Build status

The automated tests we talk about just so much are running on Travis public CI, here is its status:

arlaneenalra/sequelize