knex js query many to many - node.js

Question

i'm having trouble with node & knex.js
I'm trying to build a mini blog, with posts & adding functionality to add multiple tags to post
I have a POST model with following properties:
id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
name TEXT,
Second I have Tags model that is used for storing tags:
id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
name TEXT
And I have many to many table: Post Tags that references post & tags:
id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
post_id INTEGER NOT NULL REFERENCES posts ON DELETE CASCADE,
tag_id INTEGER NOT NULL REFERENCES tags ON DELETE CASCADE
I have managed to insert tags, and create post with tags,
But when I want to fetch Post data with Tags attached to that post I'm having a trouble
Here is a problem:
const data = await knex.select('posts.name as postName', 'tags.name as tagName'
.from('posts')
.leftJoin('post_tags', 'posts.id', 'post_tags.post_id')
.leftJoin('tags', 'tags.id', 'post_tags.tag_id')
.where('posts.id', id)
Following query returns this result:
[
{
postName: 'Post 1',
tagName: 'Youtube',
},
{
postName: 'Post 1',
tagName: 'Funny',
}
]
But I want the result to be formated & returned like this:
{
postName: 'Post 1',
tagName: ['Youtube', 'Funny'],
}
Is that even possible with query or do I have to manually format data ?

Answer 1

One way of doing this is to use some kind of aggregate function. If you're using PostgreSQL:
const data = await knex.select('posts.name as postName', knex.raw('ARRAY_AGG (tags.name) tags'))
.from('posts')
.innerJoin('post_tags', 'posts.id', 'post_tags.post_id')
.innerJoin('tags', 'tags.id', 'post_tags.tag_id')
.where('posts.id', id)
.groupBy("postName")
.orderBy("postName")
.first();
->
{ postName: 'post1', tags: [ 'tag1', 'tag2', 'tag3' ] }
For MySQL:
const data = await knex.select('posts.name as postName', knex.raw('GROUP_CONCAT (tags.name) as tags'))
.from('posts')
.innerJoin('post_tags', 'posts.id', 'post_tags.post_id')
.innerJoin('tags', 'tags.id', 'post_tags.tag_id')
.where('posts.id', id)
.groupBy("postName")
.orderBy("postName")
.first()
.then(res => Object.assign(res, { tags: res.tags.split(',')}))
There are no arrays in MySQL, and GROUP_CONCAT will just concat all tags into a string, so we need to split them manually.
->
RowDataPacket { postName: 'post1', tags: [ 'tag1', 'tag2', 'tag3' ] }

Answer 2

The result is correct as that is how SQL works - it returns rows of data. SQL has no concept of returning anything other than a table (think CSV data or Excel spreadsheet).
There are some interesting things you can do with SQL that can convert the tags to strings that you concatenate together but that is not really what you want. Either way you will need to add a post-processing step.
With your current query you can simply do something like this:
function formatter (result) {
let set = {};
result.forEach(row => {
if (set[row.postName] === undefined) {
set[row.postName] = row;
set[row.postName].tagName = [set[row.postName].tagName];
}
else {
set[row.postName].tagName.push(row.tagName);
}
});
return Object.values(set);
}
// ...
query.then(formatter);
This shouldn't be slow as you're only looping through the results once.