Migrating from clojure.java.jdbc

This page attempts to list all of the differences between clojure.java.jdbc and next.jdbc. Some of them are large and obvious, some of them are small and subtle -- all of them are deliberate design choices.

Conceptually

clojure.java.jdbc focuses heavily on a db-spec hash map to describe the various ways of interacting with the database and grew from very imperative origins that expose a lot of the JDBC API (multiple types of SQL execution, some operations returned hash maps, others update counts as integers, etc).

next.jdbc focuses on using protocols and native Java JDBC types where possible (for performance and simplicity) and strives to present a more modern Clojure API with namespace-qualified keywords in hash maps, reducible SQL operations as part of the primary API, and a streamlined set of SQL execution primitives. Execution always returns a hash map (for one result) or a vector of hash maps (for multiple results) -- even update counts are returned as if they were result sets.

Rows and Result Sets

clojure.java.jdbc returned result sets (and generated keys) as hash maps with simple, lower-case keys by default. next.jdbc returns result sets (and generated keys) as hash maps with qualified, as-is keys by default: each key is qualified by the name of table from which it is drawn, if known. The as-is default is chosen to a) improve performance and b) not mess with the data. Using a :builder-fn option of next.jdbc.result-set/as-unqualified-maps will produce simple, as-is keys. Using a :builder-fn option of next.jdbc.result-set/as-unqualified-lower-maps will produce simple, lower-case keys -- the most compatible with clojure.java.jdbc's default behavior.

If you used :as-arrays? true, you will most likely want to use a :builder-fn option of next.jdbc.result-set/as-unqualified-lower-arrays.

Option Handling

Because clojure.java.jdbc focuses on a hash map for the db-spec that is passed around, it can hold options that act as defaults for all operations on it. In addition, all operations in clojure.java.jdbc can accept a hash map of options and can pass those options down the call chain. In next.jdbc, get-datasource, get-connection, and prepare all produce Java objects that cannot have any extra options attached. On one hand, that means that you cannot provide "default options", and on the other hand it means you need to be a bit more careful to ensure that you pass the appropriate options to the appropriate function, since they cannot be passed through the call chain via the db-spec.

In All The Options, the appropriate options are shown for each function, as well as which options will get passed down the call chain, e.g., if a function can open a connection, it will accept options for get-connection; if a function can build a result set, it will accept :builder-fn. However, get-datasource, get-connection, and prepare cannot propagate options any further because they produce Java objects as their results -- in particular, prepare can't accept :builder-fn because it doesn't build result sets: only plan, execute-one!, and execute! can use :builder-fn.

In particular, this means that you can't globally override the default options (as you could with clojure.java.jdbc by adding your preferred defaults to the db-spec itself). If the default options do not suit your usage and you really don't want to override them in every call, it is recommended that you provide a wrapper namespace that implements the subset of the dozen API functions (from next.jdbc and next.jdbc.sql that you want to use), overriding their opts argument with your defaults.

Primary API

next.jdbc has a deliberately narrow primary API that has (almost) no direct overlap with clojure.java.jdbc:

• get-datasource -- has no equivalent in clojure.java.jdbc but is intended to emphasize javax.sql.DataSource as a starting point,
• get-connection -- overlaps with clojure.java.jdbc (and returns a java.sql.Connection) but accepts only a subset of the options (:dbtype/:dbname hash map, String JDBC URI); clojure.java.jdbc/get-connection accepts {:datasource ds} whereas next.jdbc/get-connection accepts the javax.sql.DataSource object directly,
• prepare -- somewhat similar to clojure.java.jdbc/prepare-statement but it accepts a vector of SQL and parameters (compared to just a raw SQL string),
• plan -- somewhat similar to clojure.java.jdbc/reducible-query but accepts arbitrary SQL statements for execution,
• execute! -- has no direct equivalent in clojure.java.jdbc (but it can replace most uses of both query and db-do-commands),
• execute-one! -- has no equivalent in clojure.java.jdbc (but it can replace most uses of query that currently use :result-set-fn first),
• transact -- similar to clojure.java.jdbc/db-transaction*,
• with-transaction -- similar to clojure.java.jdbc/with-db-transaction.

If you were using a bare db-spec hash map with :dbtype/:dbname, or a JDBC URI string everywhere, that should mostly work with next.jdbc since most functions accept a "connectable", but it would be better to create a datasource first, and then pass that around.

If you were already creating db-spec as a pooled connection datasource -- a {:datasource ds} hashmap -- then passing (:datasource db-spec) to the next.jdbc functions is the simplest migration path.

If you were using other forms of the db-spec hash map, you'll need to adjust to one of the three modes above, since those are the only ones supported in next.jdbc.

The next.jdbc.sql namespace contains several functions with similarities to clojure.java.jdbc's core API:

• insert! -- similar to clojure.java.jdbc/insert! but only supports inserting a single map,
• insert-multi! -- similar to clojure.java.jdbc/insert-multi! but only supports inserting columns and a vector of row values,
• query -- similar to clojure.java.jdbc/query,
• find-by-keys -- similar to clojure.java.jdbc/find-by-keys but will also accept a partial where clause (vector) instead of a hash map of column name/value pairs,
• get-by-id -- similar to clojure.java.jdbc/get-by-id,
• update! -- similar to clojure.java.jdbc/update! but will also accept a hash map of column name/value pairs instead of a partial where clause (vector),
• delete! -- similar to clojure.java.jdbc/delete! but will also accept a hash map of column name/value pairs instead of a partial where clause (vector).

:identifiers and :qualifier

If you are using :identifiers, you will need to change to the appropriate :builder-fn option with one of next.jdbc.result-set's as-* functions.

clojure.java.jdbc's default is the equivalent of as-unqualified-lower-maps. If you specified :identifiers identity, you can use as-unqualified-maps. If you provided your own string transformation function, you probably want as-unqualified-modified-maps and also pass your transformation function as the :label-fn option.

If you used :qualifier, you may be able to get the same effect with as-maps, as-lower-maps, or as-modified-maps. Otherwise, you may need to specify :qualifier-fn as (constantly "my-qualifier") with one of the modified builder variants.

:entities

If you are using :entities, you will need to change to the appropriate :table-fn/:column-fn options. Table naming and column naming can be controlled separately in next.jdbc. Instead of the quoted function, there is the next.jdbc.quoted namespace which contains functions for the common quoting strategies.

:result-set-fn and :row-fn

If you are using :result-set-fn and/or :row-fn, you will need to change to explicit calls (to the result set function, or to map the row function), or to use the plan approach with reduce or various transducing functions.

Note: this means that result sets are never exposed lazily in next.jdbc -- in clojure.java.jdbc you had to be careful that your :result-set-fn was eager, but in next.jdbc you either reduce the result set eagerly (via plan) or you get a fully-realized result set data structure back (from execute! and execute-one!). As with clojure.java.jdbc however, you can still stream result sets from the database and process them via reduction (was reducible-query, now plan). Remember that you can terminate a reduction early by using the reduced function to wrap the final value you produce.

Processing Database Metadata

There are no metadata-specific functions in next.jdbc but those in clojure.java.jdbc are only a very thin layer over the raw Java calls. Here's how metadata can be handled in next.jdbc:

(with-open [con (p/get-connection ds opts)]
  (-> (.getMetaData con) ; produces java.sql.DatabaseMetaData
      (.getTables nil nil nil (into-array ["TABLE" "VIEW"]))
      (rs/datafiable-result-set ds opts)))

Several methods on DatabaseMetaData return a ResultSet object. All of those can be handled similarly.

Further Minor differences

These are mostly drawn from Issue #5 although most of the bullets in that issue are described in more detail above.

• Keyword options no longer end in ? -- for consistency (in clojure.java.jdbc, some flag options ended in ? and some did not; also some options that ended in ? accepted non-Boolean values, e.g., :as-arrays? and :explain?),
• with-db-connection has been replaced by just with-open containing a call to get-connection,
• with-transaction can take a :rollback-only option, but there is no built-in way to change a transaction to rollback dynamically; either throw an exception (all transactions roll back on an exception) or call .rollback directly on the java.sql.Connection object (see Manual Rollback Inside a Transactions and the following section about save points),
• The extension points for setting parameters and reading columns are now SettableParameter and ReadableColumn protocols.

<: datafy, nav, and :schema