Lucid ORM

Lucid in Adonis.js is the official Object-Relational Mapper (ORM) built on top of Knex.js, designed to provide an active record-style data modeling and querying layer for SQL databases within Adonis.js applications.¹²³

Core Features

• Lucid allows you to define models as JavaScript (or TypeScript) classes that map directly to your database tables. Each model extends a BaseModel and defines columns using decorators, supporting both direct data mapping and custom business logic.²¹
• CRUD operations are streamlined, letting you create, read, update, and delete database records using intuitive class-based methods rather than raw SQL queries.³²
• Relationships between models (e.g., hasOne, hasMany, belongsToMany) are easily managed, providing convenient methods for traversing and querying related data.⁴³
• Lifecycle hooks, serialization control, and custom methods/properties allow you to encapsulate domain logic cleanly within each model.³⁴

Supported Databases

• Works with PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, and Microsoft SQL Server out-of-the-box, letting you choose or migrate across major SQL databases easily.⁵

Example Model (TypeScript)

import { DateTime } from 'luxon'
import { BaseModel, column } from '@adonisjs/lucid/orm'

export default class User extends BaseModel {
  @column({ isPrimary: true })
  declare id: number

  @column.dateTime({ autoCreate: true })
  declare createdAt: DateTime

  @column.dateTime({ autoCreate: true, autoUpdate: true })
  declare updatedAt: DateTime
}

Usage and Customization

• Models are typically located in the app/Models directory.
• You can leverage Lucid for advanced features like eager loading, query scopes, and pagination, as well as transactional operations.⁴
• Lucid integrates tightly with AdonisJS CLI tools for creating migrations, models, factories, and seeders to help manage and populate your database schema.⁵

Installation

To install Lucid in your AdonisJS project:

npm i @adonisjs/lucid

After installing, the setup process will help configure database connections and essential dependencies like Luxon for date handling.⁵

Lucid ORM is an integral and powerful part of the Adonis.js ecosystem, focusing on developer productivity, maintainability, and a rich Active Record pattern for database management.^{2135 678910}

⁂

1. https://docs.adonisjs.com/guides/database/lucid ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. https://lucid.adonisjs.com/docs/models ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. https://lucid.adonisjs.com ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmPwSqKA8ho ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. https://adocasts.com/lessons/introducing-installing-and-configuring-lucid-orm ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

6. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35256796 ↩

7. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55077645/adonis-lucid-orm-not-returning-data ↩

8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4fMW8UJ310 ↩

9. https://github.com/francisjed/adonis-lucid ↩

10. https://adocasts.com/lessons/lets-learn-adonis-5-setting-up-lucid ↩