Tables & DTOs¶

BaseTable¶

BaseTable[ItemType] is a generic SQLModel subclass that acts as the database table. It is the bridge between your database and your application code.

Without DTO mapping¶

If you don't need a separate data-transfer object, use BaseTable directly:

class UserTable(BaseTable, table=True):
    __tablename__ = "users"
    id: int | None = Field(default=None, primary_key=True)
    name: str
    email: str = Field(unique=True)

Repository methods will return UserTable instances directly.

With DTO mapping¶

When you want repository methods to return a separate Pydantic model instead of the raw table, specify a generic argument and implement from_item / to_item:

from pydantic import BaseModel
from metaorm import BaseTable, Field


class User(BaseModel):
    id: int | None = None
    name: str
    email: str


class UserTable(BaseTable[User], table=True):
    __tablename__ = "users"

    id: int | None = Field(default=None, primary_key=True)
    name: str
    email: str = Field(unique=True)

    @classmethod
    def from_item(cls, item: User) -> "UserTable":
        return cls(id=item.id, name=item.name, email=item.email)

    def to_item(self) -> User:
        return User(id=self.id, name=self.name, email=self.email)

Then pass dto=User to the repository:

class UserRepository(BaseRepository, table=UserTable, filter_=UserFilter, dto=User):
    pass

BaseTable also provides to_values() for insert / update operations.

Introspection helpers¶

get_table_type() — returns the SQLModel table class.
get_filter_type() — returns the filter class.
get_dto_type() — returns the DTO class or None.