Insert entity in NestJS / TypeOrm / Postgres - postgresql

Question

Here is my entity :
import { BaseEntity, Column, Entity, JoinColumn, ManyToOne, PrimaryGeneratedColumn } from 'typeorm';
import { Client } from './client.entity';
#Entity({ name: 'directory_dir' })
export class Directory extends BaseEntity {
#PrimaryGeneratedColumn("uuid", { name: 'dir_id' })
id: string;
#Column( { name: 'dir_name' } )
name: string;
#JoinColumn({ name: 'cli_client_id'})
#ManyToOne(() => Client, { eager: true })
client: Client;
}
The table is created via liquibase :
<changeSet id="3" author="Me">
<createTable tableName="DIRECTORY_DIR">
<column name="DIR_ID" type="uuid">
<constraints primaryKey="true" nullable="false"/>
</column>
<column name="DIR_NAME" type="varchar(64)">
<constraints nullable="false"/>
</column>
<column name="CLI_CLIENT_ID" type="uuid">
<constraints nullable="false" foreignKeyName="FK_DIRECTORY_DIR_CLI_CLIENT_ID" references="CLIENT_CLI(CLI_ID)"/>
</column>
</createTable>
</changeSet>
I struggle to have it inserted into the database. I have tried several syntaxes but every time, I get an error because the id is not auto-generated:
null value in column "dir_id" of relation "directory_dir" violates not-null constraint
I tried this :
const directory = new Directory();
/* Also tried this one
* const directory = this.directoryRepository.create({
* name: makeDirRequest.name,
* client: user.client
* });
*/
directory.name = makeDirRequest.name;
directory.client = user.client;
this.logger.log('directory', JSON.stringify(directory));
// Also tried with insert instead of save
return await this.directoryRepository.save(directory);
In the logs, I can see that there is no dir_id but, in the way I understand it, it should not be a problem, as I expect TypeOrm to do it when generating the INSERT statement.
When I insert entities in the database with SQL statements, I can easily find them from typeORM so the typeORM configuration seems ok.

Answer 1

The problem came from the definition of the table in PostgreSQL. A default value must be supplied in order to explain how to auto-generate the primary key.
Declaring the column like this in Liquibase does the job :
<column name="DIR_ID" type="uuid" defaultValue="gen_random_uuid()">
<constraints primaryKey="true" nullable="false"/>
</column>
I just added defaultValue="gen_random_uuid()".
gen_random_uuid() is the new uuid_generate_v4(), available from Postgres 13
From this point, I could just create the entity and insert it like this :
return await Directory.create({
name: makeDirRequest.name,
client: user.client
}).save();