How to specify name of generated dart class for view defined in .drift file

[Adam-Langley]

I plan to use a convention where by my db entity classes are suffixed with "Entity", but the SQL tables themselves don't need that suffix (it's obvious they're a table :)
I know I can control the name of the generated SQL Table using annotations - however - for my views, I have those defined in .drift files - how do I override how drift names the view classes, so I can add the suffix, independently from the name of the SQL view?

i.e

dart class: CustomerEntity
sql table: customer

sql view (generated by .drift file): customers_with_address
dart class (generated by drift build): CustomersWithAddressEntity

[frankvollebregt]

Interesting, for tables defined in .drift files, this is pretty simple

CREATE TABLE items (
  id INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
  description TEXT
) AS ItemEntity;

But I suspect something like this does not (yet) exist for VIEWs. The syntax would be a bit confusing since AS is already used when defining a view, and I can't really find anything about in in the docs.

Something that is certainly possible right now, is to define your CustomerWithAddressEntity class in Dart code and use the WITH keyword to map results of your view to this custom class, as per the second example here. I.e.

CREATE VIEW my_view WITH ExistingClass AS SELECT ...

But of course this is a hassle to maintain. I've tried a few variants using the AS keyword, but could not get it to work. I think @simolus3 will probably be able to shed some light on this :)

Ideas (for a possible implementation of this as a new feature)

Assuming it does indeed not exist yet, I had the following ideas trying to get it working (i.e. these might make sense in the syntax used throughout Drift files):

1. Simple extra AS after the name: a bit confusing because of the double AS but most similar to the use of WITH in views

CREATE VIEW my_view AS my_view_entity AS SELECT * FROM customers;

2. Use brackets to clarify it's a name alias. I like this more, even though it changes the syntax a bit from the WITH syntax.

CREATE VIEW (my_view AS my_view_entity) AS SELECT * FROM customers;

3. Place AS in the end, like with tables, which suffers from the same confusing syntax as 1. but is also not consistent with the WITH syntax

CREATE VIEW my_view AS SELECT * FROM customers AS my_view_entity;

[simolus3]

I've tried a few variants using the AS keyword, but could not get it to work.

That's because it really is unsupported at the moment. The reason for that is that AS would kind of conflict with the AS from the view definition.

Place AS in the end, like with tables, which suffers from the same confusing syntax as 1. but is also not consistent with the WITH syntax

I've considered this, but it makes the syntax conflict much worse because the AS my_view_entity should really be part of the FROM customers (giving the table an alias).

It took some parsing tricks and the changes have not yet been released, but you will be able to use the syntax from option 1 in the next drift version (so CREATE VIEW my_view AS my_view_entity AS SELECT ...).

[Adam-Langley]

Hi @simolus3 (and thanks for your input @frankvollebregt )
Wow, how serendipitous!

I will patiently await the release.

Thanks again,

[simolus3]

I've just published drift 2.17 which includes these changes.