Ecto_mnesia or memento as an Mnesia wrapper?

Hi,

I’d like to use Mnesia in a small prototype, but I don’t think I’m ready to deal with its Erlang API yet. So, I’m looking into the existing Elixir wrappers: Memento and ecto_mnesia. Any preference and/or opinions from people who have used them?

For the moment, I like that ecto_mnesia will allow me to switch DBs in the future if that becomes necessary. Anything else I should be aware of?

Thanks a lot

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We have been using ecto_mnesia for ~a year now and are currently in the process of switching to a different DB. This reasoning is correct and I suggest to do it, but be aware that ecto_mnesia is not a fault-free Ecto implementation. The main things we hit against were:

  • Ecto.Streams are not supported. There is an alternative EctoMnesia.Table.Stream but it does not return Ecto structs but rather the underlying records for some reason.
  • Preloading is not supported and has to be done manually for now.
  • Ecto.Multi is supported, but errors raised (or rolled back) are not properly forwarded to the outer scope.

And finally, ecto_mnesia is configured in part itself, and in part by configuring :mnesia. Doing this properly is a bit finnicky.

But especially for a small prototype, I’d say: Go for it! :slight_smile:

4 Likes

This is exactly the type of feedback I was looking for. Thank you!