Views and Readonly Repositories

BigAl does not distinguish between tables and views. Both use the @table() decorator. Setting readonly: true causes initialize() to return a ReadonlyRepository — which omits create, update, and destroy methods, catching accidental writes at compile time.

BigAl does not create or manage views. Create them in PostgreSQL via your migration tool.

Defining a view model

Standalone model

import { column, primaryColumn, table, Entity } from 'bigal';

@table({
  name: 'product_summaries',
  readonly: true,
})
export class ProductSummary extends Entity {
  @primaryColumn({ type: 'integer' })
  public id!: number;

  @column({ type: 'string', required: true })
  public name!: string;

  @column({ type: 'string', required: true, name: 'store_name' })
  public storeName!: string;

  @column({ type: 'integer', required: true, name: 'category_count' })
  public categoryCount!: number;
}

Corresponding view in PostgreSQL:

CREATE VIEW product_summaries AS
SELECT
  p.id,
  p.name,
  s.name AS store_name,
  COUNT(pc.category_id) AS category_count
FROM products p
JOIN stores s ON s.id = p.store_id
LEFT JOIN product_categories pc ON pc.product_id = p.id
GROUP BY p.id, p.name, s.name;

Inheriting from an existing model

If the view has the same columns as an existing table, extend the model to reuse column definitions:

import { table } from 'bigal';
import { Product } from './Product';

@table({
  name: 'readonly_products',
  readonly: true,
})
export class ReadonlyProduct extends Product {}

Schema option

For views in a non-default schema:

@table({
  schema: 'reporting',
  name: 'product_summaries',
  readonly: true,
})
export class ProductSummary extends Entity {
  // ...
}

Initializing the repository

Include the view model in initialize(). BigAl creates a ReadonlyRepository automatically:

import { initialize, ReadonlyRepository } from 'bigal';
import { Product, Store, ProductSummary } from './models';

const repos = initialize({
  models: [Product, Store, ProductSummary],
  pool,
  readonlyPool,
});

const productSummaryRepository = repos.ProductSummary as ReadonlyRepository<ProductSummary>;

Querying

Readonly repositories support the same query methods as regular repositories:

const summaries = await productSummaryRepository
  .find()
  .where({ storeName: { contains: 'Acme' } })
  .sort('categoryCount desc')
  .limit(10);

const summary = await productSummaryRepository.findOne().where({ id: 42 });

const count = await productSummaryRepository.count().where({ categoryCount: { '>': 5 } });

All query features work: where operators, sort, skip, limit, paginate, populate, join, withCount, and distinctOn.

Available methods

Method	Repository	ReadonlyRepository
findOne()	Yes	Yes
find()	Yes	Yes
count()	Yes	Yes
create()	Yes	No
update()	Yes	No
destroy()	Yes	No