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Building Database Applications in Elixir with Ecto

Save the Table-less Structs

Explore how to save data from table-less structs in Elixir using Ecto by applying changesets or converting structs into maps for Repo.insert_all. Understand the pros and cons of each approach to decide the best method for validating and persisting data effectively within your applications.

We'll cover the following...

Save data from schemas

We have a couple of options to save the data from these schemas into the artists table. One way would be to add extra changeset functions to our Artist schema that take a Band or SoloArtist struct as input.

Elixir
def changeset(%MusicDB.Band{} = band) do
  {:ok, birth_date} = Date.new(band.year_started, 1, 1) 
  {:ok, death_date} = Date.new(band.year_ended, 12, 31)
  changeset(%Artist{
  name: band.name, 
  birth_date: birth_date, 
  death_date: death_date
  }, %{})
end
def changeset(%MusicDB.SoloArtist{} = solo_artist) do 
  name =
    "#{solo_artist.name1} #{solo_artist.name2} #{solo_artist.name3}" 
    |> String.trim()
  changeset(%Artist{
  name: name,
  birth_date: solo_artist.birth_date, 
  death_date: solo_artist.death_date
  }, %{})
end

With this approach, we would validate our Band or SoloArtist ...