Flint

Practical Ecto embedded_schemas for data validation, coercion, and manipulation.

Features

• ! Variants of Ecto field, embeds_one, and embeds_many macros to mark a field as required (see. Required Fields)
• Colocated validations, so you can define common validations alongside field declarations (see Validations)
• Adds Access implementation to all schemas
• Adds Jason.Encoder implementation to all schemas
• New Ecto.Schema Reflection Functions
  • __schema__(:required) - Returns list of fields marked as required (from ! macros)
  • __schema__(:validations) - Keyword mapping of fields to validations
• Convenient generated function (changeset,new,new!,...) (see. Generated Functions)
• Configurable Application-wide defaults for Ecto.Schema API (see. Config)

Installation

def deps do
  [
    {:flint, github: "acalejos/flint"}
  ]
end

Motivation

Flint is built on top of Ecto and is meant to provide good defaults for using embedded_schemas for use outside of a database. It also adds a bevy of convenient features to the existing Ecto API to make writing schemas and validations much quicker.

Of course, since you're using Ecto, you can use this for use as an ORM, but this is emphasizing the use of embedded_schemas as just more expressive and powerful maps while keeping compatibility with Ecto.Changeset, Ecto.Type, and all of the other benefits Ecto has to offer.

In particular, Flint focuses on making it more ergonomic to use embedded_schemas as a superset of Maps, so a Flint.Schema by default implements the Access behaviour and implements the Jason.Encoder protocol.

Flint also was made to leverage the distinction Ecto makes between the embedded representation of the schema and the dumped representation. This means that you can dictate how you want the Elixir-side representation to look, and then provide transformations for how it should be dumped, which helps when you want the serialized representation to look different.

This is useful if you want to make changes in the server-side code without needing to change the client-side (or vice-versa). Or perhaps you want a mapped representation, where instead of an Ecto.Enum just converting its atom key to a string when dumped, it gets mapped to an integer, etc.

Usage

If you want to declare a schema with Flint, just use Flint within your module, and now you have access to Flint's implementation of the embedded_schema/1 macro. You can declare an embedded_schema within your module as you otherwise would with Ecto. Within the embedded_schema/1 block, you also have access to Flints implementations of embeds_one,embeds_one!,embeds_many, embeds_many!, field, and field!.

You can also use the shorthand notation, where you pass in your schema definition as an argument to the use/2 macro. Flint.__using__/1 also accepts the following options which will be passed as module attributes to the Ecto embedded_schema. Refer to the Ecto.Schema docs for more about these options.

• primary_key (default false)
• schema_prefix (default nil)
• schema_context (default nil)
• timestamp_opts (default [type: :naive_datetime])

So these two are equivalent:

defmodule User do
  use Flint

  embedded_schema do
    field! :username, :string
    field! :password, :string, redacted: true
    field :nickname, :string
  end
end

is equivalent to:

defmodule User do
  use Flint, schema: [
    field!(:username, :string)
    field!(:password, :string, redacted: true)
    field(:nickname, :string)
  ]
end

If you're starting with Flint and you know you will stick with it, the shorthand might make more sense. But if you want to be able to quickly change between use Ecto.Schem and use Flint, or you're converting some existing Ecto embedded_schemas to Flint, the latter might be preferable.

Since a call to Flint's embedded_schema or use Flint, schema: [] just creates an Ecto embedded_schema you can use them just as you would any other Ecto schemas. You can compose them, apply changesets to them, etc.

Required Fields

Flint adds the convenience bang (!) macros (embed_one!,embed_many!, field!) for field declarations within your struct to declare a field as required within its changeset function.

Flint schemas also have a new reflection function in addition to the normal Ecto reflection functions.

• __schema__(:required) -- Returns a list of all fields that were marked as required.

Field Validations

Basic Validations

Flint allows you to colocate schema definitions and validations.

defmodule Person do
  use Flint

  embedded_schema do
    field! :first_name, :string,  max: 10, min: 5
    field! :last_name, :string, min: 5, max: 10
    field :favorite_colors, {:array, :string}, subset_of: ["red", "blue", "green"]
    field! :age, :integer, greater_than: 0, less_than: 100
  end
end

Parameterized Validations

You can even parameterize the options passed to the validations:

defmodule Person do
  use Flint

  embedded_schema do
    field! :first_name, :string,  max: 10, min: 5
    field! :last_name, :string, min: 5, max: 10
    field :favorite_colors, {:array, :string}, subset_of: ["red", "blue", "green"]
    field! :age, :integer, greater_than: 0, less_than: max_age
  end
end

If you do this, make sure to pass the options as a keyword list into the call to changeset:

Person.changeset(
  %Person{},
  %{first_name: "Bob", last_name: "Smith", favorite_colors: ["red", "blue", "pink"], age: 101},
  [max_age: 100]
)

#Ecto.Changeset<
  action: nil,
  changes: %{
    age: 101,
    first_name: "Bob",
    last_name: "Smith",
    favorite_colors: ["red", "blue", "pink"]
  },
  errors: [
    first_name: {"should be at least %{count} character(s)",
     [count: 5, validation: :length, kind: :min, type: :string]},
    favorite_colors: {"has an invalid entry", [validation: :subset, enum: ["red", "blue", "green"]]},
    age: {"must be less than %{number}", [validation: :number, kind: :less_than, number: 100]}
  ],
  data: #Person<>,
  valid?: false,
  ...
>

This lets you change the parameters of the validations for each call to changeset for more flexibility

Options

Currently, the options / validations supported out of the box with Flint are all based on validation functions defined in Ecto.Changeset:

• :greater_than (see. Ecto.Changeset.validate_number/3)
• :less_than (see. Ecto.Changeset.validate_number/3)
• :less_than_or_equal_to (see. Ecto.Changeset.validate_number/3)
• :greater_than_or_equal_to (see. Ecto.Changeset.validate_number/3)
• :equal_to (see. Ecto.Changeset.validate_number/3)
• :not_equal_to (see. Ecto.Changeset.validate_number/3)
• :format (see. Ecto.Changeset.validate_format/4)
• :subset_of (see. Ecto.Changeset.validate_subset/4)
• :in (see. Ecto.Changeset.validate_inlusion/4)
• :not_in (see. Ecto.Changeset.validate_exclusion/4)
• :is (see. Ecto.Changeset.validate_length/3)
• :min (see. Ecto.Changeset.validate_length/3)
• :max (see. Ecto.Changeset.validate_length/3)
• :count (see. Ecto.Changeset.validate_length/3)

Aliases

If you don't like the name of an option, you can provide a compile-time list of aliases to map new option names to existing options.

In your config, add an :aliases key with a Keyword value, where each key is the new alias, and the value is an existing option name.

For example, these are default aliases implemented in Flint:

config Flint, aliases: [
    lt: :less_than,
    gt: :greater_than,
    le: :less_than_or_equal_to,
    ge: :greater_than_or_equal_to,
    eq: :equal_to,
    neq: :not_equal_to
  ]

NOTE If you add your own aliases and want to keep these above defaults, you will have to add them manually to your aliases.

__schema__(:validations)

Since validations are enforced through the generated changeset functions, if you override this function you will not get the benefits of the validations.

If you want to implement your own, you can use __schema__(:validations) which is an added reflection function that stores validations.

NOTE These are stored as their quoted representation to support passing bindings, so make sure to account for this if implementing yourself.

If you want to override changeset but want to keep the default validation behavior, there is also the Flint.Schema.validate_fields function, which accepts an %Ecto.Changetset{} and optionally bindings, and performs validations using the information stored in __schema__(:validations).

Generated Functions

Flint provides default implementations for the following functions for any schema declaration. Each of these is overridable.

• changeset - Creates a changeset by casting all fields and validating all that were marked as required. If a :default key is provided for a field, then any use of a bang (!) declaration will essentially be ignored since the cast will fall back to the default before any valdiations are performed.
• new - Creates a new changeset from the empty module struct and applies the changes (regardless of whether the changeset was valid).
• new! - Same as new, except raises if the changeset is not valid.

Config

You can configure the default options set by Flint.

• embeds_one: The default arguments when using embeds_one. Defaults to [defaults_to_struct: true, on_replace: :delete]
• embeds_one!: The default arguments when using embeds_one!. Defaults to [on_replace: :delete]
• embeds_many: The default arguments when using embeds_many or embeds_many!. Defaults to [on_replace: :delete]
• embeds_many!: The default arguments when using embeds_many!. Defaults to [on_replace: :delete]
• :enum: The default arguments for an Ecto.Enum field. Defaults to [embed_as: :dumped].
• :aliases: See Aliases

You can also configure any aliases you want to use for schema validations.

Embedded vs Dumped Representations

Flint takes advantage of the distinction Ecto makes between an embedded_schema's embedded and dumped representations.

For example, by default in Flint, Ecto.Enums that are Keyword (rather than just lists of atoms) will have their keys be the embedded representation, and will have the values be the dumped representation.

defmodule Book do
  use Flint, schema: [
    field(:genre, Ecto.Enum, values: [biography: 0, science_fiction: 1, fantasy: 2, mystery: 3])
  ]
end

book = Book.new(%{genre: "biography"})
# %Book{genre: :biography}

Flint.Schema.dump(book)
# %{genre: 0}

In this example, you can see how you can share multiple representations of the same data using this distinction.

You can also implement your own Ecto.Type and further customize this:

defmodule ContentType do
  use Ecto.Type
  def type, do: :atom

  def cast("application/json"), do: {:ok, :json}

  def cast(_), do: :error
  def load(_), do: :error

  def dump(:json), do: {:ok, "application/json"}
  def dump(_), do: :error

  def embed_as(_) do
    :dump
  end
end

Here, cast will be called when creating a new Flint schema from a map, and dump will be used when calling Flint.Schema.dump/1.

defmodule URL do
  use Flint, schema: [
    field(:content_type, ContentType)
  ]
end

url = URL.new(%{content_type: "application/json"})
# %URL{content_type: :json}

Flint.Schema.dump(url)
# %{content_type: "application/json"}

Examples

You can view the Notebooks folder for some examples in LIivebook.

You can also look at Merquery for a real, comprehensive example of how to use Flint.