---
title: "Rust: sqlx without macros"
author: "James Pace"
date: "2024/01/01"
---

[`sqlx`](https://github.com/launchbadge/sqlx) is a Rust crate that allows
for interacting with a SQL database.
One of the more popular features of `sqlx` is that it does compile time checking
of database queries (giving you some ORM-ish properties) while still allowing
you to write straight SQL queries without the abstraction of an ORM though use
of their [`query!`](https://docs.rs/sqlx/0.5.5/sqlx/macro.query.html).

To make this work, `sqlx` requires:

1. access to a database at compile time, OR
2. config files to be generated from a running database everytime
   the database queries are modified.

I don't particularly like either of those options, though I admittedly
have not tried either of them long term.
Requring a running database at compile time would seem to make compilation
a lot slower.
It also adds a unexpected step (run a container hosting a development database)
before you can compile, which just feels wrong.
The configuation files are better in the sense they don't require a running
database at compile time, but it's an extra thing that has to be kept in sync
with the code.

Luckily, `sqlx` provides functions that can be used to do queries that aren't
checked at compile time for people with the same concerns as I have.
Because this isn't the recommended path though, the number of examples of
using the functions online is a little lacking, which I'll make an effort
to improve in this post.

# Background

# Example