Declaring Models

Models are normal structs with basic Go types, pointers/alias of them or custom types implementing Scanner and Valuer interfaces

For Example:

type User struct {
  ID           uint
  Name         string
  Email        *string
  Age          uint8
  Birthday     *time.Time
  MemberNumber sql.NullString
  ActivatedAt  sql.NullTime
  CreatedAt    time.Time
  UpdatedAt    time.Time
}

Conventions

GORM prefer convention over configuration, by default, GORM uses ID as primary key, pluralize struct name to snake_cases as table name, snake_case as column name, and uses CreatedAt, UpdatedAt to track creating/updating time

If you follow the conventions adopted by GORM, you’ll need to write very little configuration/code, If convention doesn’t match your requirements, GORM allows you to configure them

gorm.Model

GORM defined a gorm.Model struct, which includes fields ID, CreatedAt, UpdatedAt, DeletedAt

// gorm.Model definition
type Model struct {
  ID        uint           `gorm:"primaryKey"`
  CreatedAt time.Time
  UpdatedAt time.Time
  DeletedAt gorm.DeletedAt `gorm:"index"`
}

You can embed it into your struct to include those fields, refer Embedded Struct

Advanced

Field-Level Permission

Exported fields have all permission when doing CRUD with GORM, and GORM allows you to change the field-level permission with tag, so you can make a field to be read-only, write-only, create-only, update-only or ignored

NOTE ignored fields won’t be created when using GORM Migrator to create table

type User struct {
  Name string `gorm:"<-:create"` // allow read and create
  Name string `gorm:"<-:update"` // allow read and update
  Name string `gorm:"<-"`        // allow read and write (create and update)
  Name string `gorm:"<-:false"`  // allow read, disable write permission
  Name string `gorm:"->"`        // readonly (disable write permission unless it configured)
  Name string `gorm:"->;<-:create"` // allow read and create
  Name string `gorm:"->:false;<-:create"` // createonly (disabled read from db)
  Name string `gorm:"-"`            // ignore this field when write and read with struct
  Name string `gorm:"-:all"`        // ignore this field when write, read and migrate with struct
  Name string `gorm:"-:migration"`  // ignore this field when migrate with struct
}

Creating/Updating Time/Unix (Milli/Nano) Seconds Tracking

GORM use CreatedAt, UpdatedAt to track creating/updating time by convention, and GORM will set the current time when creating/updating if the fields are defined

To use fields with a different name, you can configure those fields with tag autoCreateTime, autoUpdateTime

If you prefer to save UNIX (milli/nano) seconds instead of time, you can simply change the field’s data type from time.Time to int

type User struct {
  CreatedAt time.Time // Set to current time if it is zero on creating
  UpdatedAt int       // Set to current unix seconds on updating or if it is zero on creating
  Updated   int64 `gorm:"autoUpdateTime:nano"` // Use unix nano seconds as updating time
  Updated   int64 `gorm:"autoUpdateTime:milli"`// Use unix milli seconds as updating time
  Created   int64 `gorm:"autoCreateTime"`      // Use unix seconds as creating time
}

Embedded Struct

For anonymous fields, GORM will include its fields into its parent struct, for example:

type User struct {
  gorm.Model
  Name string
}
// equals
type User struct {
  ID        uint           `gorm:"primaryKey"`
  CreatedAt time.Time
  UpdatedAt time.Time
  DeletedAt gorm.DeletedAt `gorm:"index"`
  Name string
}

For a normal struct field, you can embed it with the tag embedded, for example:

type Author struct {
  Name  string
  Email string
}
type Blog struct {
  ID      int
  Author  Author `gorm:"embedded"`
  Upvotes int32
}
// equals
type Blog struct {
  ID    int64
  Name  string
  Email string
  Upvotes  int32
}

And you can use tag embeddedPrefix to add prefix to embedded fields’ db name, for example:

type Blog struct {
  ID      int
  Author  Author `gorm:"embedded;embeddedPrefix:author_"`
  Upvotes int32
}
// equals
type Blog struct {
  ID          int64
  AuthorName  string
  AuthorEmail string
  Upvotes     int32
}

Fields Tags

Tags are optional to use when declaring models, GORM supports the following tags:
Tags are case insensitive, however camelCase is preferred.

Associations Tags

GORM allows configure foreign keys, constraints, many2many table through tags for Associations, check out the Associations section for details