Working with Legacy Tables

While out of the box Sequelize will seem a bit opinionated it's easy to work legacy tables and forward proof your application by defining (otherwise generated) table and field names.

Tables

class User extends Model {}
User.init(
  {
    // ...
  },
  {
    modelName: 'user',
    tableName: 'users',
    sequelize,
  },
);

Fields

class MyModel extends Model {}
MyModel.init(
  {
    userId: {
      type: DataTypes.INTEGER,
      field: 'user_id',
    },
  },
  { sequelize },
);

Primary keys

Sequelize will assume your table has a id primary key property by default.

To define your own primary key:

class Collection extends Model {}
Collection.init(
  {
    uid: {
      type: DataTypes.INTEGER,
      primaryKey: true,
      autoIncrement: true, // Automatically gets converted to SERIAL for postgres
    },
  },
  { sequelize },
);

class Collection extends Model {}
Collection.init(
  {
    uuid: {
      type: DataTypes.UUID,
      primaryKey: true,
    },
  },
  { sequelize },
);

And if your model has no primary key at all you can use Model.removeAttribute('id');

Instances without primary keys can still be retrieved using Model.findOne and Model.findAll.
While it's currently possible to use their instance methods (instance.save, instance.update, etc…), doing this will lead to subtle bugs, and is planned for removal in a future major update.

info

If your model has no primary keys, you need to use the static equivalent of the following instance methods, and provide your own where parameter:

• instance.save: Model.update
• instance.update: Model.update
• instance.reload: Model.findOne
• instance.destroy: Model.destroy
• instance.restore: Model.restore
• instance.decrement: Model.decrement
• instance.increment: Model.increment

Foreign keys

// 1:1
Organization.belongsTo(User, { foreignKey: 'owner_id' });
User.hasOne(Organization, { foreignKey: 'owner_id' });

// 1:M
Project.hasMany(Task, { foreignKey: 'tasks_pk' });
Task.belongsTo(Project, { foreignKey: 'tasks_pk' });

// N:M
User.belongsToMany(Role, {
  through: 'user_has_roles',
  foreignKey: 'user_role_user_id',
});
Role.belongsToMany(User, {
  through: 'user_has_roles',
  foreignKey: 'roles_identifier',
});