Persistent serialized Haskell records to the database. A Database Entity (A row in SQL, a document in MongoDB, etc) corresponds to a Key plus a Haskell record.

For every Haskell record type stored in the database there is a corresponding PersistEntity instance. An instance of PersistEntity contains meta-data for the record. PersistEntity also helps abstract over different record types. That way the same query interface can return a PersistEntity, with each query returning different types of Haskell records.

Some advanced type system capabilities are used to make this process type-safe. Persistent users usually don't need to understand the class associated data and functions.

Updating a database entity.

Persistent users use combinators to create these.

Query options.

Persistent users use these directly.

Filters which are available for select, updateWhere and deleteWhere. Each filter constructor specifies the field being filtered on, the type of comparison applied (equals, not equals, etc) and the argument for the comparison.

Persistent users use combinators to create these.

Note that it's important to be careful about the PersistFilter that you are using, if you use this directly. For example, using the In PersistFilter requires that you have an array- or list-shaped EntityField. It is possible to construct values using this that will create malformed runtime values.

Value to filter with. Highly dependant on the type of filter used.

Since: 2.10.0

Datatype that represents an entity, with both its Key and its Haskell record representation.

When using a SQL-based backend (such as SQLite or PostgreSQL), an Entity may take any number of columns depending on how many fields it has. In order to reconstruct your entity on the Haskell side, persistent needs all of your entity columns and in the right order. Note that you don't need to worry about this when using persistent's API since everything is handled correctly behind the scenes.

However, if you want to issue a raw SQL command that returns an Entity, then you have to be careful with the column order. While you could use SELECT Entity.* WHERE ... and that would work most of the time, there are times when the order of the columns on your database is different from the order that persistent expects (for example, if you add a new field in the middle of you entity definition and then use the migration code -- persistent will expect the column to be in the middle, but your DBMS will put it as the last column). So, instead of using a query like the one above, you may use rawSql (from the Database.Persist.GenericSql module) with its /entity selection placeholder/ (a double question mark ??). Using rawSql the query above must be written as SELECT ?? WHERE ... Then rawSql will replace ?? with the list of all columns that we need from your entity in the right order. If your query returns two entities (i.e. (Entity backend a, Entity backend b)), then you must you use SELECT ??, ?? WHERE ..., and so on.

Textual representation of the record

Get list of values corresponding to given entity.

Predefined toJSON. The resulting JSON looks like {"key": 1, "value": {"name": ...}}.

The typical usage is:

instance ToJSON (Entity User) where
    toJSON = keyValueEntityToJSON

Predefined parseJSON. The input JSON looks like {"key": 1, "value": {"name": ...}}.

The typical usage is:

instance FromJSON (Entity User) where
    parseJSON = keyValueEntityFromJSON

Predefined toJSON. The resulting JSON looks like {"id": 1, "name": ...}.

The typical usage is:

instance ToJSON (Entity User) where
    toJSON = entityIdToJSON

Predefined parseJSON. The input JSON looks like {"id": 1, "name": ...}.

The typical usage is:

instance FromJSON (Entity User) where
    parseJSON = entityIdFromJSON

Convenience function for getting a free PersistField instance from a type with JSON instances.

Example usage in combination with fromPersistValueJSON:

instance PersistField MyData where
  fromPersistValue = fromPersistValueJSON
  toPersistValue = toPersistValueJSON

Convenience function for getting a free PersistField instance from a type with JSON instances. The JSON parser used will accept JSON values other that object and arrays. So, if your instance serializes the data to a JSON string, this will still work.

Example usage in combination with toPersistValueJSON:

instance PersistField MyData where
  fromPersistValue = fromPersistValueJSON
  toPersistValue = toPersistValueJSON

Convenience function for getting a free PersistField instance from a type with an Enum instance. The function derivePersistField from the persistent-template package should generally be preferred. However, if you want to ensure that an ORDER BY clause that uses your field will order rows by the data constructor order, this is a better choice.

Example usage in combination with fromPersistValueEnum:

data SeverityLevel = Low | Medium | Critical | High
  deriving (Enum, Bounded)
instance PersistField SeverityLevel where
  fromPersistValue = fromPersistValueEnum
  toPersistValue = toPersistValueEnum

Convenience function for getting a free PersistField instance from a type with an Enum instance. This function also requires a Bounded instance to improve the reporting of errors.

Example usage in combination with toPersistValueEnum:

data SeverityLevel = Low | Medium | Critical | High
  deriving (Enum, Bounded)
instance PersistField SeverityLevel where
  fromPersistValue = fromPersistValueEnum
  toPersistValue = toPersistValueEnum

This type class is used with the OverloadedLabels extension to provide a more convenient means of using the EntityField type. EntityField definitions are prefixed with the type name to avoid ambiguity, but this ambiguity can result in verbose code.

If you have a table User with a name Text field, then the corresponding EntityField is UserName. With this, we can write #name :: EntityField User Text.

What's more fun is that the type is more general: it's actually #name :: (SymbolToField "name" rec typ) => EntityField rec typ

Which means it is *polymorphic* over the actual record. This allows you to write code that can be generic over the tables, provided they have the right fields.

Since: 2.11.0.0