mysql2-async

A wrapper for mysql2 to add convenience, especially when developing with async/await and async iterables.

Overview

This library has a few core principles:

• Focus on promises and async iterators, do away with callbacks and event-emitting streams
• Make advanced usage optional but easy, e.g.:
  • transactions
  • streaming large result sets
  • prepared statements
• Make it difficult to make a mistake, e.g.:
  • Always use a connection pool
  • Hide everything having to do with acquiring/releasing connections
  • Fix timezones (by default) so that we are always storing UTC in the database

Getting Started

Standard connection

Works just like creating a mysql2 pool. You will want to make a single pool and export it so that it can be imported all over your code.

import Db from 'mysql2-async'
export const db = new Db({
  host: 'yourhost',
  ...
})

async function main() {
  const row = await db.getrow('SELECT ...')
}
main().catch(e => console.error(e))

Connect with environment variables

When working in docker, it's common to keep database configuration in environment variables. In order to make that easy, this library provides a convenient way to import a pool instance that has already been created and configured with the following environment variables:

  MYSQL_HOST (default 'localhost')
  MYSQL_PORT (default '3306')
  MYSQL_DATABASE (default 'default_database')
  MYSQL_USER (default 'root')
  MYSQL_PASS
  MYSQL_POOL_SIZE (default is mysql2's default)
  MYSQL_SKIPTZFIX (default false) // see below discussion of the timezone fix

This way, connecting is very simple, and you don't have to worry about creating and exporting the pool for the rest of your codebase:

import db from 'mysql2-async/db'

async function main() {
  const row = await db.getrow('SELECT ...')
}
main().catch(e => console.error(e))

CommonJS imports

You must refer to .default when importing with require:

const Db = require('mysql2-async').default
// or the instance created with environment variables (see above)
const db = require('mysql2-async/db').default

Basic Usage

A lot of convenience methods are provided that allow you to specify the kind of operation you are about to do and the kind of return data you expect.

Querying

const rows = await db.getall('SELECT name FROM mytable')
console.log(rows) // [{ name: 'John' }, { name: 'Maria' }, ...]
const row = await db.getrow('SELECT name FROM mytable WHERE name=?', ['John'])
console.log(row) // { name: 'John' }
const name = await db.getval('SELECT name FROM mytable WHERE name=?', ['John'])
console.log(name) // John
const names = await db.getvals('SELECT name FROM mytable WHERE name IN (:name1, :name2)',
  { name1: 'John', name2: 'Maria' })
console.log(names) // ['John', 'Maria']

Named parameters

As you can see in the getvals example in the previous section, mysql2's named parameter support works here as well.

Mutating

const insertId = await db.insert('INSERT INTO mytable (name) VALUES (?)', ['Mike'])
const rowsAffected = await db.update('UPDATE mytable SET name=? WHERE name=?', ['Johnny', 'John'])
const success = await db.execute('CREATE TABLE anothertable ...')

Note that db.update returns only rows affected, not rows changed. Affected is the number of rows that matched the WHERE, while changed is the number of rows that actually changed after the SET. I didn't want to complicate things by trying to return both, and you can always rewrite your query like SET val=? WHERE val!=? so that affected becomes the same as changed. And if you really don't want to, you can use db.query to get back result.changedRows.

Raw query

If the convenience methods are hiding something you need from mysql2, you can use .query() to get back whatever would have been returned by mysql2 (inside a promise, however).

const result = await db.query('INSERT INTO mytable (name) VALUES (?)', ['Mike'])
const insertId = result.insertId

IN helper

Writing queries with IN operators can be a little complicated, especially when using named parameters. A helper is provided that takes your existing bound parameters array/object and an array to be used for the IN. It generates the SQL while also mutating your existing bound parameters, so that you can easily use it inline.

const binds = { author: authorid }
const rows = db.getall(`
  SELECT * FROM mytable
  WHERE author = :author
  AND (
    genre IN (${db.in(binds, genres)}) OR
    title IN (${db.in(binds, titles)})
  )`, binds)

Advanced Usage

Streaming

Async Iterable

The async iterable approach is by far the simplest. It works almost exactly like .getall(), except the advantage here is that it does not load the entire result set into memory at one time, which will help you avoid out-of-memory issues when dealing with thousands or millions of rows.

const stream = db.stream('SELECT name FROM mytable')
for await (const row of stream) {
  // work on the row
}

for await is very safe, as breaking the loop or throwing an error inside the loop will clean up the stream appropriately.

Note that .stream() returns a node Readable in object mode, so you can easily do other things with it like .pipe() it to another stream processor. When using the stream without for await, you must call stream.destroy if you do not want to finish processing it and carefully use try {} finally {} to destroy it in case your code throws an error. Failure to do so will leak a connection from the pool.

Iterator .next()

Another available approach is to use the iterator pattern directly. This is a standard javascript iterator that you would receive from anything that supports the async iterator pattern. Probably to be avoided unless you are working with multiple result sets at the same time (e.g. syncing two tables).

const iterator1 = db.iterator('SELECT name FROM mytable')
const iterator2 = db.iterator('SELECT * FROM anothertable')
while (true) {
  const { value: row1, done1 } = await iterator1.next()
  const { value: row2, done2 } = await iterator2.next()
  if (!done1 || !done2) {
    try {
      // do some work to sync the rows
    } catch (e) {
      await iterator1.return()
      await iterator2.return()
      throw e
    }
  } else {
    break
  }
}

As illustrated above, an iterator needs to be cleaned up when your code is aborted before reaching the end, or it will leak a connection. Remember to await iterator.return() if you are going to abandon the iterator, and inside try/catch/finally blocks in your row processing code. An SQL query error will show up on the first await iterator.next() and does not need to be cleaned up.

Transactions

A method is provided to support working inside a transaction. Since the core Db object is a mysql pool, you cannot send transaction commands without this method, as each command would end up on a different connection.

To start a transaction, provide a callback that MUST return a promise (just make it async). A new instance of db is provided to the callback; it represents a single connection, inside a transaction. Remember to pass this along to any other functions you call during the transaction - if you call a function that uses the global db object its work will happen outside the transaction!

You do NOT send START TRANSACTION, ROLLBACK, or COMMIT as these are handled automatically.

await db.transaction(async db => {
  // both of these queries happen in the same transaction
  const row = await db.getrow('SELECT * FROM ...')
  await db.update('UPDATE mytable SET ...')
})

If you need to roll back, simply throw an error. Similarly, any query that throws an error will trigger a rollback.

await db.transaction(async db => {
  const id = await db.insert('INSERT INTO user ...')
  throw new Error('oops!')
}) // the INSERT will be rolled back and will not happen

Retrying Deadlocks

db.transaction() accepts an options parameter allowing you to set a maximum number of retries allowed upon deadlock:

await db.transaction(async db => {
  const row = await db.getrow('SELECT * FROM ...')
  await db.update('UPDATE mytable SET ...')
}, { retries: 1 })

If this transaction is the loser of a deadlock, it will retry the whole transaction once, including refetching the getrow statement.

Prepared Statements

Prepared statements are nearly automatic, you just need to notate which queries need it. It's desirable to carefully pick a few complicated queries because each unique SQL string that uses prepared statement support will use up a small amount of resources on both client and server.

await db.getrow('SELECT m.*, o.* FROM mytable m, othertable o WHERE ...complicated...',
  [ /* bind parameters */ ],
  { saveAsPrepared: true }
)

Now, future calls with this same SQL statement (before inserting bound parameters) will be able to skip the query planning stage on the mysql server and return data a little bit faster.

Note that this is just a pass-through to mysql2's prepared statement implementation, so you can refer to their documentation / code for more details.

Timezone Fix

Working with timezones can be very confusing. This library takes an opinionated approach and sets it up so that all dates will be stored as UTC, whether the date is set automatically on the server through a DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP setting, set with a server-side function such as NOW(), or sent from the client as a javascript Date() object.

Older versions of mysql (less than 5.1) may throw an error because of this. If you need to work with a server running an old version of mysql, or an existing database that does not or has not stored dates as UTC in the past, you may set the skiptzfix configuration variable and then be very careful while handling dates.

const db = new Db({ skiptzfix: true })

Typescript

This library is written in typescript and provides its own types. For added convenience, methods that return rows or values will accept a generic so that you can specify the return type you expect:

interface Book {
  id: number
  title: string
  isbn: string
}
const row = await db.getrow<Book>('SELECT id, title, isbn FROM books WHERE id=?', [5])
// `row` is a `Book`
const rows = await db.getall<Book>('SELECT id, title, isbn FROM books')
// `rows` is a `Book[]`
const stream = db.stream<Book>('SELECT id, title, isbn FROM books')
for await (const row of stream) {
  // `row` is a `Book`
}