Ecto is a domain specific language for writing database queries in Elixir.
Add Ecto as a dependency in your mix.exs file. If you are using PostgreSQL, you will also need the library that Ecto's adapter is using.
def deps do
[ { :ecto, github: "elixir-lang/ecto" },
{ :pgsql, github: "semiocast/pgsql" } ]
endAfter you are done, run mix deps.get in your shell to fetch and compile the dependencies.
There are three key components that makes up Ecto: repositories, entities and, of course, queries. Repositories map to a database, you define an adapter to use and an Ecto URL so it knows how to connect to the database and the repository will handle the connections to the database. Entities are Elixir records that, with the specified metadata, map to a database table. Queries select data from an entity and are executed against a repository.
Define a repository:
defmodule MyRepo do
use Ecto.Repo, adapter: Ecto.Adapter.Postgres
def url, do: "ecto://eric:hunter42@localhost/mydb"
endCreate an entity:
defmodule Post do
use Ecto.Entity
schema :posts do
field :title, :string
field :content, :string
end
endRun a query:
import Ecto.Query
# A query that will fetch the ten first post titles
query = from p in Post,
where: p.id <= 10,
select: p.title
# Run the query against the database to actually fetch the data
titles = MyRepo.fetch(query)There are example applications in the examples/ directory.