Include getters and setters with models so we may work with interfaces instead of specific structs #2466

What do you want to change?

Selecting all fields and a subset of fields for the same table yields different structs. Currently, we're required to write a mapper function which transforms the row(s) in to an abstraction our applications can understand - however, if sqlc was to provide getters and setters, we'd be able to define interfaces which the results conform to and leave a lot of the heavy lifting to go.

Please see the example below:

CREATE TABLE `products`
(
    `name`  varchar(255) NOT NULL,
    `price` int(11)      NOT NULL
)

// generated models/queries

// select * from products
type Product struct {
  Name string
  Price int
}
func (p Product) GetName() string { ... }
func (p Product) GetPrice() int { ... }

// select `name` from products
type ProductNameRow struct {
  Name string
}
func (p ProductNameRow) GetName() string { ... }

// app

type ProductWithName interface {
  GetName() string
}

func DoesProductHaveCoolName[T ProductWithName](product T) bool { ... }

DoesProductHaveCoolName(&ProductNameRow{}) // good
DoesProductHaveCoolName(&Product{}) // also good

For this particular problem extending the template for structs to include getters and setters would be sufficient, however - it may be a better idea to allow the extension of the template via the config file instead?

What database engines need to be changed?

PostgreSQL, MySQL

What programming language backends need to be changed?

Go