Ecto a Slick Query DSL for the Elixir Language

Elixir? What on earth is Elixir? It is a programming language that somewhat reminds me of Ruby. Here is some example Elixir code:

defmodule Hello do
  IO.puts "Defining the function world"

  def world do
    IO.puts "Hello World"
  end

  IO.puts "Function world defined"
end

And it has a Stack Overflow community with around 50 tagged questions as of December 2013. And it has a query DSL library called Ecto, which describes itself as such:

Ecto is a domain specific language for writing queries and interacting with databases in Elixir.

Example queries can be seen on the project’s GitHub readme page:

A simple SELECT

use Ecto.Query

query = from w in Weather,
      where: w.prcp > 0 or w.prcp == nil,
     select: w

Repo.all(query)

Using JOINs

query = from p in Post,
      where: p.id == 42,
  left_join: c in p.comments,
     select: assoc(p, c)

[post] = Repo.all(query)

post.comments.to_list

Looks like a slick (but not typesafe?) querying DSL mix between LINQ and Clojure’s sqlkorma.

For those brave ones among you using the Elixir language, this might be your one (and only) choice to access a SQL database! Good luck!