🚀 The only Async ORM you need. 🚀

Documentation: https://saffier.tarsild.io 📚

Source Code: https://github.com/tarsil/saffier

The official supported version is always the latest released.

Saffier is currently revamped, powered up and ready to be more powerful and flexible, while maintaining the same familiar interface. The new version will be released as Saffier 2.0 and the versioning will grow from there. The supported version will always be the latest released, so if you are using Saffier, make sure to keep it updated to the latest version to get the best experience and all the new features.

Why this now? Saffier plays an important role in the ecosystem of tools I am building and I want to make sure it is the best it can be for everyone. The new version will be more powerful, flexible and easier to use, while maintaining the same familiar interface.

Saffier was never neglected, or at least intentionally neglected, but it was always a challenge to maintain it while also working on other projects and tools.

This will no longer be the case and Saffier will come to stay.

Saffier is intentionally Python-native and ORM-focused. It is designed to stay framework-agnostic, lightweight in validation concerns, and aligned with the developer ergonomics that made Saffier popular.

Now, if you are interested in helping and maintaining Saffier, please don't hesitate to reach out and contribute, it is always welcome and appreciated.

Almost every project, in one way or another uses one (or many) databases. An ORM is simply an mapping of the top of an existing database. ORM extends for Object Relational Mapping and bridges object-oriented programs and relational databases.

Two of the most well known ORMs are from Django and SQLAlchemy. Both have their own strengths and weaknesses and specific use cases.

This ORM is built on the top of SQLAlchemy core and aims to simplify the way the setup and queries are done into a more common and familiar interface.

Saffier is built for teams that want a direct SQLAlchemy-core-powered ORM workflow without introducing a Pydantic-centric architecture in the model layer.

When investigating for a project different types of ORMs and compared them to each other, for a lot of use cases, SQLAlchemyalways took the win but had an issue, the async support (which now there are a few solutions). While doing the research I came across Encode ORM.

The team is the same behind of Databases, Django Rest Framework, Starlette, httpx and a lot more tools used by millions.

There was one issue though, although ORM was doing a great familiar interface with SQLAlchemy and providing the async solution needed, it was, by the time of this writing, incomplete and they even stated that in the documentation and that is how Saffier was born.

Saffier uses some of the same concepts of ORM from Encode but rewritten in Pydantic but not all.

Saffier is some sort of a fork from Encode ORM but rewritten at its core and with a complete set of tools with a familiar interface to work with. If you are familiar with Django, then you came for a treat 😄.

Saffier leverages the power of Pydantic for its fields while offering a friendly, familiar and easy to use interface.

This ORM was designed to be flexible and compatible with pretty much every ASGI framework, like Esmerald, Starlette, FastAPI, Sanic, Quart... With simple pluggable design thanks to its origins.

Saffier couldn't exist without Encode ORM and the continous work done by the amazing team behind it. For that reason, thank you!

While adopting a familiar interface, it offers some cool and powerful features on the top of SQLAlchemy core.

• Model inheritance - For those cases where you don't want to repeat yourself while maintaining intregity of the models.
• Abstract classes - That's right! Sometimes you simply want a model that holds common fields that doesn't need to created as a table in the database.
• Meta classes - If you are familiar with Django, this is not new to you and Saffier offers this in the same fashion.
• Managers - Versatility at its core, you can have separate managers for your models to optimise specific queries and querysets at ease.
• Filters - Filter by any field you want and need.
• Model operators - Classic operations such as update, get, get_or_none, bulk_create, bulk_update and a lot more.
• Relationships made it easy - Support for OneToOne and ForeignKey in the same Django style.
• Constraints - Unique constraints through meta fields.
• Native test client - We all know how hard it can be to setup that client for those tests you need so we give you already one.
• Multi-tenancy - Saffier supports multi-tenancy and even offers a possible solution to be used out of the box if you don't want to waste time.

And a lot more you can do here.

Since Saffier, like Encode ORM, is built on the top of SQLAlchemy core, it brings its own native migration system running on the top of Alembic but making it a lot easier to use and more pleasant for you.

Have a look at the migrations for more details.

To install Saffier, simply run:

$ pip install saffier

You can pickup your favourite database driver by yourself or you can run:

Postgres

$ pip install saffier[postgres]

MySQL/MariaDB

$ pip install saffier[mysql]

SQLite

$ pip install saffier[sqlite]

The following is an example how to start with Saffier and more details and examples can be found throughout the documentation.

Use ipython to run the following from the console, since it supports await.

import saffier
from saffier import Database, Registry

database = Database("sqlite:///db.sqlite")
models = Registry(database=database)


class User(saffier.Model):
    """
    The User model to be created in the database as a table
    If no name is provided the in Meta class, it will generate
    a "users" table for you.
    """

    id = saffier.IntegerField(primary_key=True)
    is_active = saffier.BooleanField(default=False)

    class Meta:
        registry = models


# Create the db and tables
# Don't use this in production! Use Alembic or any tool to manage
# The migrations for you
await models.create_all()

await User.query.create(is_active=False)

user = await User.query.get(id=1)
print(user)
# User(id=1)

As stated in the example, if no tablename is provided in the Meta class, Saffier automatically generates the name of the table for you by pluralising the class name.

Do you want to have more complex structures and connect to your favourite framework? Have a look at connections to understand how to do it properly.

Exciting!

In the documentation we go deeper in explanations and examples, this was just to warm up. 😁