pgx - PostgreSQL Driver and Toolkit

pgx is a pure Go driver and toolkit for PostgreSQL.

The pgx driver is a low-level, high performance interface that exposes PostgreSQL-specific features such as LISTEN / NOTIFY and COPY. It also includes an adapter for the standard database/sql interface.

The toolkit component is a related set of packages that implement PostgreSQL functionality such as parsing the wire protocol and type mapping between PostgreSQL and Go. These underlying packages can be used to implement alternative drivers, proxies, load balancers, logical replication clients, etc.

Why use pgx

  • Full Control over Queries: Unlike Go ORMs like GORM or SQLBoiler, pgx lets you write raw SQL while still giving you the advantages of Go’s type safety, strong database connection pooling, and performance optimizations. This way, you’re not surrendering control over the query structure or execution, which is crucial if you need fine-tuned control over performance or specific query patterns.
  • Avoiding ORM Abstraction Overhead: Many ORMs impose some abstraction that can create issues when dealing with schema management or advanced PostgreSQL-specific features (e.g., native JSONB support, full-text search, or specific index strategies). By using pgx, you’re closer to the database and don’t need to wait for ORM maintainers to support the features you want to use.
  • Schema Management: As you’re not comfortable with many ORMs automatically handling migrations or schema updates, pgx gives you full control. You can use tools like golang-migrate to manually handle schema migrations, ensuring they are deliberate and exactly as you want.
  • Decision to Hold off on Investment: Given your uncertainty about continuing with Amazon Timestream (or finding an alternative), holding off on investing too much time into ORM-based abstractions makes sense. Timestream and relational databases like PostgreSQL have different paradigms (time-series vs. relational), so investing heavily into one abstraction could lock you in if you switch backends. For now, pgx is adaptable and doesn’t restrict you from writing queries specific to your database system.

Example of executing a query:

package main
 
import (
    "context"
    "fmt"
    "log"
    "github.com/jackc/pgx/v4"
)
 
func main() {
    conn, err := pgx.Connect(context.Background(), "postgres://user:password@localhost:5432/mydb")
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatalf("Unable to connect to database: %v\n", err)
    }
    defer conn.Close(context.Background())
 
    var name string
    err = conn.QueryRow(context.Background(), "SELECT name FROM users WHERE id=$1", 1).Scan(&name)
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatalf("QueryRow failed: %v\n", err)
    }
    fmt.Println(name)
}