Lucky v0.17 is now out and has support for the newest Crystal (v0.30)!

Be sure to upgrade your version of Crystal, and take a look at our UPGRADE NOTES for help with migrating your app.

We’ve made a ton of changes for this release, but we will highlight a few. You can see a full list through our CHANGELOG.

# Better primary key support

Before this release, your primary key fields would be auto-generated as Int32 for you with an option to use UUID . We’ve now added a new primary_key method which lets you specify the type. Avram supports a few different types now to include Int16 and Int64 .

We have also set the default primary key to be Int64 now.

def migrate create :users do # creates a primary key column named `id` primary_key id : Int64 end end

Along with the support for new types, you can now also name your primary key whatever you need. Generally you’d use the name id for your primary column, but there may be a case where you need to customize that.

Learn more about primary keys

# JSON and Array support

Postgres supports lots of different column types. Two really important ones used for complex structures are the jsonb and array column types. Lucky 0.17 adds support into specify your jsonb fields as JSON::Any , or use any of the basic postgres array fields.

table :users do column preferences : JSON::Any column tags : Array(String) end

Now we can use these columns with our model.

user = UserQuery.first user.tags #=> ["vip", "prefers email"] user.preferences["theme_color"].as_s #=> "dark_mode"

Learn more about column types

Avram now supports multiple databases at the same time. You can have some models that connect to your primary database, and then a second set of models that connect to a legacy database if you wish.

Example use cases for multiple databases:

Secondary for special finance reporting

Legacy DB support

One for API, One for CMS

Read / Write replica setup

Whatever your other databases are for, Avram is now better equipped to accommodate you.

Learn more about multi-db support

# Polymorphic associations

Support for polymorphic associations is now first-class with the polymorphic method. This method lets you specify your polymorphic association in a type-safe and friendly way.

class Comment < BaseModel table do # Note that both these `belongs_to` *must* be nilable belongs_to photo : Photo? belongs_to video : Video? # `commentable` could be a `photo` or `video` polymorphic commentable, associations: [:photo, :video] end end

Your Comment model now has a commentable method which could return a Photo object, or a Video object. This ensures that your commentable is one of these associations.

Learn more about polymorphic associations

# New tasks

Lucky comes with some built-in tasks for helping you do things like generate files, or run your migrations. Lucky 0.17 has added a few new ones to the mix.

lucky db.migrations.status - Run this to get a nice printout of your current migration status. See which migrations are still pending, and what your latest one was.

- Run this to get a nice printout of your current migration status. See which migrations are still pending, and what your latest one was. lucky db.rollback_to MIGRATION_TIMESTAMP - Rollback your migrations to the specific MIGRATION_TIMESTAMP .

- Rollback your migrations to the specific . lucky db.verify_connection - Test to ensure your database can connect properly.

Learn more about tasks

Previously named Forms , these have been renamed and revamped with a much cleaner, and easier to use API. We realized a lot of people would get confused when talking about Forms since you used them to interact with HTML forms. Now named SaveOperation , these give a bit more clarity. We also renamed VirtualForm to just Operation .

Learn more about operations

# Parting words

We’re super stoked about this release, and hope you are too. Please give it a spin and help us find bugs so our next release is even more solid. If you find any issues, don’t hesitate to report the issue. If you’re unsure, just hop on gitter chat so we can help you out.

Thanks so much for the support!

# Follow and spread the word

If you haven’t already, give us a star on github, and be sure to follow us on Twitter.

For questions, or just to chat, come say hi on gitter.