Add support for custom ORM's

[miguel12345]

Hi,

I am currently using Sequelize as a ORM for my postgres database but I was looking for keystone for a great frontend tool to manage my data. The thing is that it seems to be completely locked in to mongo.

I know that you don't intend to support multiple backends, but is it doable (minutes/hours) to adapt keystone to a custom ORM? I know I would still need to provide data type mapping between sequelize and keystone but that would be easy. Apart from that, the ORM should only need to provide 5/6 methods (create/update/find/destroy etc), so, in theory, it shouldn't be too hard (also, mongoose/waterline/sequelize have similar interfaces), but what do you think? Has anyone managed to plug a custom ORM on keystone?

[morenoh149]

@miguel12345 I think the main blockers is the extended use of mongoose features (populate at least). Using something like waterline would be great imo. Similar discussion was had keystonejs/keystone#838

[RyanCCollins]

Hi @morenoh149 I can work on this in the next month or so. I talked with you about this in gitter (old username was TechRapport). I have been building a fullstack keystone app for the last 8 weeks, so have some good ideas here and I have some experience with waterline.

[morenoh149]

as long as it makes sense with this vision https://youtu.be/of2VM3Wwkxk?t=27m17s

[quitequinn]

Has any progress been made with integrating this?

[RyanCCollins]

Yes. I started working on this. I am in the reverse engineering stage. I will update when I've made some progress!

[mxstbr]

Any updates here @RyanCCollins? Can we help?

[RyanCCollins]

Hey @mxstbr. Thanks for getting in touch. I have made a bit of progress, but keep getting pulled aside on other projects. I may have a few questions, specifically regarding the integration with Keystone lists when I get to that point. What's the best way to get in touch with you? Thanks!

[mxstbr]

Either here directly or Twitter!

[RyanCCollins]

Hey @mxstbr I want to apologize. The timing is just not going to be right for me to help out with this anytime soon. I am waste deep in it for a while, but if its still open when I get back, I would really love to contribute.

Thanks!

[ryardley]

I was thinking about this when covering all bases and mulling over reasons I would not necessarily always recommend keystone to a client (I often do recommend it!). In the process of looking around I happened across this. No idea if it is any good or how stable it is but I thought I would link it here as food for thought if you are working on it. http://www.camintejs.com/

[quinn]

@RyanCCollins have you had a chance to make any progress on this? I'd like to help if there is a work-in-progress somewhere for this. It seems that a lot of the discussion has been around whether to switch ORMs, whereas instead I think I would prefer to try to just create a shim to minimize code change to the rest of the project. e.g. this file:

https://github.com/keystonejs/keystone-demo/blob/master/models/Post.js

instead of require('keystone') at the top, you would do require('keystone/sequel') or whatever.

[gautamsi]

Keystone 4 is going in maintenance mode. Expect no major change. see #4913 for details.

v5 has support for SQL databases by using Knex database adapter