Sqlite-easy: A primitive yet easy to use sqlite library

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Good question. Thanks!

sqlite-simple has more capabilities (for example streaming results) than sqlite-easy and is much more battle-tested, but is a bit more complicated to work with and imo a bit less ergonomic. Specifically:

  • sqlite-easy does not use typeclasses. No ToRow or FromField or other. It uses SQLData instead to encode possible database values and leaves the encoding/decoding to the user. I find this to be easier to work with and it does not require type annotations.
  • sqlite-easy uses the SQLite type instead of Connection -> IO. This means that we don’t need to thread through the Connection, and it makes working with transactions a bit easier I think.
  • As you mentioned, sqlite-easy comes with simple resource-pool out of the box, so if you’re not sure what you’re doing or need something quick, this is pretty handy.
  • sqlite-easy comes with migrations support (via migrant) out of the box. If you know what you’re doing you will find migrant-sqlite-simple or other solutions, and you’ll figure out how to use it yourself. sqlite-easy caters to people that want a documented solution out of the box.
  • sqlite-easy’s dependency footprint is a bit smaller than sqlite-simple’s, but not by much.

All in all, if you are a Haskell veteran that knows how to figure stuff out yourself, and you want a more featureful, battle-tested library, you might want to use sqlite-simple. If you don’t have as much experience and want to just follow a manual to get your toy project working, and you are fine with using a more restricted, experimental library, starting with sqlite-easy might be easier.

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