Joint models

[clragon]

Because drifts model generation is very convenient and I have been ignoring it in favour of my own freezed classes,
I am looking into leaning more into the model generation.

However, I cannot figure out how I could generate a model that is the result of a join.
Assume this completely fictional table setup:

class DungeonsTable extends Table {
  IntColumn get id => integer().autoIncrement()();
}

class BossRoomsTable extends Table {
  IntColumn get id =>
      integer().references(DungeonsTable, #id, onDelete: KeyAction.cascade)();
  IntColumn get boss => integer()();
}

class Boss extends Table {
  IntColumn get id => integer().autoIncrement()();
  TextColumn get name => text()();
  TextColumn get description => text()();
  TextColumn get image => text()();
}

class TreasuresRoomTable extends Table {
  IntColumn get id =>
      integer().references(DungeonsTable, #id, onDelete: KeyAction.cascade)();
  IntColumn get treasure => integer()();
}

class Treasure extends Table {
  IntColumn get id => integer().autoIncrement()();
  TextColumn get name => text()();
  TextColumn get description => text()();
  TextColumn get image => text()();
}

now it would be really nice if I could automatically generate a class like
Dungeon, BossRoom and TreasureRoom that have a structure like

class Dungeon {
  final BossRoom bossRoom;
  final TreasureRoom treasureRoom;
}

class BossRoom {
  final Boss boss;
}

class TreasureRoom {
  final Treasure treasure;
}

which are essentially just a bunch of joins.
I can of course manually write all this, but it would be really cool if drift would let me generate it instead.

I have briefly looked into Views on whether I can pull off something like that, but I was unable to quite understand them and I believe they might not be suited.

[simolus3]

You're right - views would generate flat data structures so they can't do this.

In my opinion, drift's generator should only generate row classes for tables without going into the direction of a full ORM. Resolving references in row classes and queries is not in scope for this project. I think drift is a great platform for others to build this on: Drift builders emit their results as hidden json files as well which others could pick up to infer relations and the runtime API can be used to build complex queries too. But I don't think this should be part of drift itself.

If you don't mind writing the queries yourself, you can use nested results in drift files which would give you a similar structure.

[clragon]

In my opinion, drift's generator should only generate row classes for tables without going into the direction of a full ORM

Thats a shame because I would like to somehow have some kind of consistency.
Either I make my models or drift makes my models.

I guess in this case its me making my models, the joint ones too.

I feel like drift not generating models for joins seems somewhat incomplete;
a joint model seems like an easy requirement to have and so I now need to bring in other generators to make those, besides drift.
But I understand why you would not want to write that hornets nest too.

in drift files

unfortunately I am a big fan of writing everything in dart without drift files.