RowBuilder and ResultSetBuilder

In Getting Started, it was noted that, by default, execute! and execute-one! return result sets as (vectors of) hash maps with namespace-qualified keys as-is. If your database naturally produces uppercase column names from the JDBC driver, that's what you'll get. If it produces mixed-case names, that's what you'll get.

The default builder for rows and result sets creates qualified keywords that match whatever case the JDBC driver produces. That builder is next.jdbc.result-set/as-maps but there are several options available:

• as-maps -- table-qualified keywords as-is, the default, e.g., :ADDRESS/ID, :myTable/firstName,
• as-unqualified-maps -- simple keywords as-is, e.g., :ID, :firstName,
• as-lower-maps -- table-qualified lower-case keywords, e.g., :address/id, :mytable/firstname,
• as-unqualified-lower-maps -- simple lower-case keywords as-is, e.g., :id, :firstname,
• as-arrays -- table-qualified keywords as-is (vector of column names, followed by vectors of row values),
• as-unqualified-arrays -- simple keywords as-is,
• as-lower-arrays -- table-qualified lower-case keywords,
• as-unqualified-lower-arrays -- simple lower-case keywords.

The reason behind the default is to a) be a simple transform, b) produce qualified keys in keeping with Clojure's direction (with clojure.spec etc), and c) not mess with the data. as-arrays is (slightly) faster than as-maps since it produces less data (vectors of values instead of vectors of hash maps), but the lower options will be slightly slower since they include (conditional) logic to convert strings to lower-case. The unqualified options may be slightly faster than their qualified equivalents but make no attempt to keep column names unique if your SQL joins across multiple tables.

RowBuilder Protocol

This protocol defines four functions and is used whenever next.jdbc needs to materialize a row from a ResultSet as a Clojure data structure:

• (->row builder) -- produces a new row (a (transient {}) by default),
• (column-count builder) -- returns the number of columns in each row,
• (with-column builder row i) -- given the row so far, fetches column i from the current row of the ResultSet, converts it to a Clojure value, and adds it to the row (for as-maps this is a call to .getObject, a call to read-column-by-index -- see the ReadableColumn protocol below, and a call to assoc!),
• (row! builder row) -- completes the row (a (persistent! row) call by default).

ResultSet Protocol

This protocol defines three functions and is used whenever next.jdbc needs to materialize a result set (multiple rows) from a ResultSet as a Clojure data structure:

• (->rs builder) -- produces a new result set (a (transient []) by default),
• (with-row builder rs row) -- given the result set so far and a new row, returns the updated result set (a (conj! rs row) call by default),
• (rs! builder rs) -- completes the result set (a (persistent! rs) call by default).

Result Set Builder Functions

The as-* functions described above are all implemented in terms of these protocols. They are passed the ResultSet object and the options hash map (as passed into various next.jdbc functions). They return an implementation of the protocols that is then used to build rows and the result set. Note that the ResultSet passed in is mutable and is advanced from row to row by the SQL execution function, so each time ->row is called, the underlying ResultSet object points at each new row in turn. By contrast, ->rs (which is only called by execute-all!) is invoked before the ResultSet is advanced to the first row.

The options hash map for any next.jdbc function can contain a :gen-fn key and the value is used at the row/result set builder function. The tests for next.jdbc.result-set include a record-based builder function as an example of how you can extend this to satisfy your needs.

ReadableColumn

As mentioned above, when with-column is called, the expectation is that the row builder will call .getObject on the current state of the ResultSet object with the column index and will then call read-column-by-index, passing the column value, the ResultSetMetaData, and the column index. That function is part of the ReadableColumn protocol that you can extend to handle conversion of arbitrary database-specific types to Clojure values.

In addition, inside reducible!, as each value is looked up by name in the current state of the ResultSet object, the read-column-by-label function is called, again passing the column value and the column label (the name used in the SQL to identify that column). This function is also part of the ReadableColumn protocol.

The default implementation of this protocol is for these two functions to return nil as nil, a Boolean value as a canonical true or false value (unfortunately, JDBC drivers cannot be relied on to return unique values here!), and for all other objects to be returned as-is.

Common extensions here could include converting java.sql.Timestamp to java.time.Instant for example but next.jdbc makes no assumptions beyond nil and Boolean.

Note that the converse, converting Clojure values to database-specific types is handled by the SettableParameters, discussed in the next section (Prepared Statements).

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