Discussion on: Dirt simple SQL queries in F#

Edit: I just re-read the preceding conversation and realized I answered the wrong question. Both yours and @lanayx previously.

No it is not a problem at all for the p helper to box the value, to avoid repeating box every time. And in fact that is exactly how I defined it in my own library. I believe it was just an oversight in the post. I will update the post.

Leaving the original response below.

I created this tiny helper due to a couple of factors.

1. ADO.NET boxes all parameters values to obj anyway
2. F# will not auto-upcast the values in the list, which can lead to type inference compile errors.

I recall there being an issue on a dotnet repo about having the option to not box sql parameters. But I am not sure if typed SQL parameters ever made it into a release.

So without the helper, the parameter list looked like this:

[
    "@SomeParam", box someParam
    "@OtherParam", box otherParam
]

Not terrible, but removing characters , box to add p on the front seemed a favorable trade.

That ended up being fortuitous because later, using a tuple was not quite enough. Sometimes it is necessary to declare the database type of the parameter. For example, when the value is null. (With Npgsql also when the column is jsonb.) So the parameter tuple became a full record type.

    type SqlParam =
        {
            Name : string
            Value : obj
            Type : DbType option
        }

p can be changed to work with this, and in a way that does not break existing defined queries. And it will be drastically shorter than spelling out the full SqlParam record.

    let p name value =
        {
            Name = name
            Value = value
            Type = None
        }


    let pTyped name value type_ =
        {
            Name = name
            Value = value
            Type = Some type_
        }