Schema Application

After you define tables, fields, indexes, and buckets, you turn them into SurrealQL and apply them to a database.

applySchema

import { applySchema } from 'unreal-orm';
import { User, UserEmailIndex, Post, Follow } from './tables';

await applySchema(db, [User, Post, Follow, UserEmailIndex]);

applySchema walks the definitions and emits DEFINE TABLE, DEFINE FIELD, DEFINE INDEX, and DEFINE BUCKET statements in dependency order. The db argument is any SurrealDB-like object, such as a Surreal client or a transaction.

Application methods

Both applySchema and the generate* functions accept an optional method argument:

• 'error' (default) — throw if the table already exists.
• 'IF NOT EXISTS' — emit DEFINE ... IF NOT EXISTS.
• 'OVERWRITE' — emit DEFINE ... OVERWRITE.

await applySchema(db, [User], 'IF NOT EXISTS');

Generating DDL without applying it

import { generateFullSchemaQl, generateTableSchemaQl } from 'unreal-orm';

// All definables
const fullDdl = generateFullSchemaQl([User, UserEmailIndex]);

// One table
const tableDdl = generateTableSchemaQl(User);

This is useful for inspecting the generated SurrealQL, writing manual migrations, or running schema changes through a CI gate.

The Unreal namespace

Unreal bundles the most common schema utilities into one import.

import { Unreal } from 'unreal-orm';

await Unreal.applySchema(db, [User, Post]);
const ddl = Unreal.generateSchema([User, Post]);

For programmatic schema work the Unreal.ast object exposes parsing, extraction, comparison, and migration helpers.

import { Unreal } from 'unreal-orm';

const ast = Unreal.ast.extractSchema([User, Post]);
const changes = Unreal.ast.compareSchemas(localAst, remoteAst);

See Migrations for the full AST workflow.