Introduction
What Knorm is
Knorm is a collection of classes that allow creating JavaScript ORM's to make it easier to work with databases. It's main goal is to enable issuing database queries with code written in plain JavaScript.
Typical use-cases
Knorm can be configured to work with any existing database without requiring any changes to the database layer. It allows creating multiple ORM's in the same codebase – be it a Node.js application or otherwise – which allows scoped usage or gradual migration of an existing codebase.
Knorm can be used on on the browser for some limited use-cases:
- Validating models on the browser, in addition to validating them on the server.
- Generating queries on the browser, purely for display. Queries generated on the browser should never be sent to the server for processing – this would make it possible for an attacker to send harmful queries to the same server.
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Knorm relies on plugins to access the database. One may therefore create an ORM that has no database access by exluding any of the database-access plugins.
Supported environments
These environments are currently supported:
| Environment | Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
| JavaScript | >= ES6 | Knorm can be used on any JavaScript environment that supports ES6 (aka ES2015). |
| TypeScript | Knorm is written in TypeScript and exports type definitions for all its code. | |
| PostgreSQL | >= 9.6 | PostgreSQL support is provided via the @knorm/postgres plugin. |
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Support for more databases is on the roadmap.
What Knorm is not
Knorm does not create or run any database migrations (creating or altering tables, columns, indexes etc). For creating and running migrations, consider a library such as Knex.js.
It does not generate models from existing database schema, although this is intended to be a feature in the future.