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Ralph

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A modern, type-safe Active Record ORM for Crystal.

Ralph is an Active Record-style ORM for Crystal that prioritizes developer experience, type safety, and explicit behavior. Built on the principles of reliability and predictability, Ralph provides a familiar API for developers coming from Rails or Laravel, while leveraging Crystal's powerful type system to catch errors at compile-time.

Why Ralph?

Ralph isn't just another ORM. It's built with specific goals in mind:

  • Type Safety First: Leverage Crystal's type system to ensure your data is valid before it ever hits the database.
  • Explicit over Implicit: No lazy loading surprises. You get exactly what you ask for, making performance bottlenecks easier to spot and fix.
  • Fluent & Immutable: A query builder that feels like natural language and respects immutability, allowing for safe query composition.
  • Performance Optimized: Bulk operations (insert_all, upsert_all, update_all, delete_all), statement caching, and identity map support for high-performance applications.
  • Batteries Included: From migrations and validations to a powerful CLI, Ralph provides everything you need to manage your data layer.

Quick Preview

require "ralph"

# Define your schema
class User < Ralph::Model
  table :users

  column id : Int64, primary: true
  column name : String
  column email : String

  validates_presence_of :name, :email
  validates_uniqueness_of :email

  has_many posts : Post, dependent: :destroy
end

# Query with confidence
users = User.query { |q|
  q.where("active = ?", true)
   .order("created_at", :desc)
   .limit(10)
}

Installation

Add Ralph to your shard.yml:

dependencies:
  ralph:
    github: watzon/ralph

Run shards install to get started.

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