In a nutshell, pggen runs each query on Postgres to extract type information, and generates the appropriate code. In detail, pggen processes a query file in the following steps.
-
Resolve the query files from the
--query-glob
flag and schema files from the--schema-glob
flag in cmd/pggen/pggen.go. Pass the normalized options topggen.Generate
in generate.go. -
Start Postgres by either connecting to the database specified in
--postgres-connection
or by starting a new Dockerized Postgres instance. internal/pgdocker/pgdocker.go creates and destroys Docker images for pggen. -
Parse each query files into an
*ast.File
containing many*ast.SourceQuery
nodes in internal/parser/interface.go. -
Infer the Postgres types and nullability for the input parameters and output columns of an
*ast.SourceQuery
and store the results inpginfer.TypedQuery
in internal/pginfer/pginfer.go.To determine the Postgres types, pggen uses itself to compile the queries in internal/pg/query.sql. The queries leverage the Postgres prepare command to find the input parameter types.
pggen determines output columns types and names by preparing the query and reading the field descriptions returned with the query result rows. The field descriptions contain the type ID for each output column. The type ID is a Postgres object ID (OID), the primary key to identify a row in the
pg_type
catalog table.pggen determines if an output column can be null using heuristics. If a column cannot be null, pggen uses more ergonomic types to represent the output like
string
instead ofpgtype.Text
. The heuristics are quite simple; see [internal/pginfer/nullability.go]. A proper approach requires a control flow analysis to determine nullability. I've started down that road in pgplan.go. -
Transform each
*ast.File
intocodegen.QueryFile
in generate.goparseQueries
. -
Use a language-specific code generator to transform
codegen.QueryFile
into agolang.TemplatedFile
like with internal/codegen/golang/templater.go. -
Emit the generated code from
golang.TemplateFile
in internal/codegen/golang/templated_file.go
For additional detail, see the original, outdated design doc and discussion with the pgx author and sqlc author.