simonw / simonw/sqlite-utils

Mechanism for turning nested JSON into foreign keys / many-to-many

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#26 14 comments 4 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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enhancement
Dominant language
Python
Stars
2.2k
Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

The GitHub JSON APIs have a really interesting convention with respect to related objects.

Consider https://api.github.com/repos/simonw/sqlite-utils/issues - here's a truncated subset:

  {
    "id": 449818897,
    "node_id": "MDU6SXNzdWU0NDk4MTg4OTc=",
    "number": 24,
    "title": "Additional Column Constraints?",
    "user": {
      "login": "IgnoredAmbience",
      "id": 98555,
      "node_id": "MDQ6VXNlcjk4NTU1",
      "avatar_url": "https://avatars0.githubusercontent.com/u/98555?v=4",
      "gravatar_id": ""
    },
    "labels": [
      {
        "id": 993377884,
        "node_id": "MDU6TGFiZWw5OTMzNzc4ODQ=",
        "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/simonw/sqlite-utils/labels/enhancement",
        "name": "enhancement",
        "color": "a2eeef",
        "default": true
      }
    ],
    "state": "open"
  }

The user column lists a complete user. The labels column has a list of labels.

Since both user and label have populated id field this is actually enough information for us to create records for them AND set up the corresponding foreign key (for user) and m2m relationships (for labels).

It would be really neat if sqlite-utils had some kind of mechanism for correctly processing these kind of patterns.

Thanks to jq there's not much need for extra customization of the shape here - if we support a narrowly defined structure users can use jq to reshape arbitrary JSON to match.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

No specific file or test is named; start by reviewing sqlite-utils's existing JSON import behavior and how its Python and CLI entry points represent related data. Done would be a defined mechanism that turns nested objects with populated ids into records, foreign keys, and many-to-many relationships, with coverage for the shown GitHub API shape.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python, sqlite
Domain
database
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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