Improve syntax

[galacticgibbon]

I was thinking that drift could do with some improved syntax for reading/writing from tables.

Right now

1. The use of cascade notation on where forces some ugly parentheses
2. It feels redundant to write both operations e.g. update() and write()

writing

current:

    await (_db.profileRows.update()..where((t) => t.id.equals(id))).write(
      ProfileRowsCompanion(email: Value(newEmail)),
    );

proposed improvement... something like this would be ideal

      await _db.profileRows
          .update(email: Value(newEmail))
          .where((t) => t.id.equals(id));

reading

current:

    return (_profileRows.select()..where((t) => t.id.equals(id)))
        .watchSingle()
        .map((result) => result._toProfile());

becomes

    return _profileRows
        .watchSingle()
        .where((t) => t.id.equals(id))
        .map((result) => result._toProfile());

[galacticgibbon]

Should I make this an issue or is discussion better?

[dickermoshe]

If you have any ideas to help mitigate this, let us know!

[galacticgibbon]

How about leaving the old syntax in, deprecating it later, and having a v2 as a separate field.

Something like _profileRows.v2.select()... as the new syntax, deprecate the original methods (or just remove them entirely) e.g. _profileRows.select() and then after some reasonable amount of time, moving everything over to v2 and deprecating the v2 property.

[simolus3]

In the above example, the ..where((t) => t.id.equals(id)) statement would have no effect and users of Drift V2 would have no way of catching it.

To be fair, with mutable statements that's a not really a problem because .. affects the same internal statement (but those obviously have their own set of problems).

Something like _profileRows.v2.select()... as the new syntax

Right, but that would require us to generate a lot of additional code...

[galacticgibbon]

Right, but that would require us to generate a lot of additional code...

Is the issue here that the old generated code wouldn't get removed during minification? Some solutions:

• Just don't generate the v1, remove it entirely, and require people to use .v2, after all it is a breaking change.
• Or make v2 opt-in -> add a flag in build.yaml which will build the v2 code and not the v1 code

In either case, could provide a migration tool to make the switch smoother.

[galacticgibbon]

Anyway, in my proposed case

    return _profileRows
        .watchSingle()
        .where((t) => t.id.equals(id))
        .map((result) => result._toProfile());

It wouldn't cause a silent error because .select() is removed entirely, since multiple operation methods feels redundant e.g. select()...watchSingle().

Also, replacing update()...write() with just update() would not be silent too because the update() would now require a property.

On a tangent, just as I was looking at api:

In the current version of drift, there's a lot of redundancy already e.g.

      _profileRows.insert().insertReturning(
        ProfileRow(
          id: id,
          email: newEmail,
        ),
      );

and

      _profileRows.insertReturning(
        ProfileRow(
          id: id,
          email: newEmail,
        ),
      );

these are both possible right now, and I think it's confusing to have both