Naming Strategy

When mapping your entities to database tables and columns, their names will be defined by naming strategy. There are 3 basic naming strategies you can choose from:

• UnderscoreNamingStrategy - default of all SQL drivers
• MongoNamingStrategy - default of MongoDriver
• EntityCaseNamingStrategy - uses unchanged entity and property names

You can override this when initializing ORM. You can also provide your own naming strategy, just implement NamingStrategy interface and provide your implementation when bootstrapping ORM:

class MyCustomNamingStrategy implements NamingStrategy {
  ...
}

const orm = await MikroORM.init({
  ...
  namingStrategy: MyCustomNamingStrategy,
  ...
});

You can also extend AbstractNamingStrategy which implements one method for you - getClassName() that is used to map entity file name to class name.

Naming Strategy in mongo driver

MongoNamingStrategy will simply use all field names as they are defined. Collection names will be translated into lower-cased dashed form:

MyCoolEntity will be translated into my-cool-entity collection name.

Naming Strategy in SQL drivers

MySqlDriver defaults to UnderscoreNamingStrategy, which means all your database tables and columns will be lower-cased and words divided by underscored:

CREATE TABLE `author` (
  `id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `created_at` datetime(3) DEFAULT NULL,
  `updated_at` datetime(3) DEFAULT NULL,
  `terms_accepted` tinyint(1) DEFAULT NULL,
  `name` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `email` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
  `born` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `favourite_book_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

NamingStrategy API

NamingStrategy.getClassName(file: string, separator?: string): string

Return a name of the class based on its file name.

NamingStrategy.classToTableName(entityName: string): string

Return a table name for an entity class.

NamingStrategy.getEntityName(tableName: string, schemaName?: string): string

Return a name of the entity class based on database table name (used in EntityGenerator).

Default implementation ignores the schema name, but when duplicates are detected, the name will be prefixed automatically.

NamingStrategy.propertyToColumnName(propertyName: string): string

Return a column name for a property (used in EntityGenerator).

NamingStrategy.getEnumClassName(columnName: string, tableName: string, schemaName?: string): string

Return an enum class name for a column (used in EntityGenerator).

NamingStrategy.getEnumTypeName(columnName: string, tableName: string, schemaName?: string): string

Get an enum type name. Used with enumType: 'dictionary' and enumType: 'union-type' entity generator option.

NamingStrategy.enumValueToEnumProperty(enumValue: string, columnName: string, tableName: string, schemaName?: string): string

Return an enum property name for an enum value (used in EntityGenerator).

NamingStrategy.referenceColumnName(): string

Return the default reference column name.

NamingStrategy.joinColumnName(propertyName: string): string

Return a join column name for a property.

NamingStrategy.joinTableName(sourceEntity: string, targetEntity: string, propertyName: string): string

Return a join table name. This is used as default value for pivotTable.

NamingStrategy.joinKeyColumnName(entityName: string, referencedColumnName?: string): string

Return the foreign key column name for the given parameters.

NamingStrategy.indexName(tableName: string, columns: string[], type: 'primary' | 'foreign' | 'unique' | 'index' | 'sequence'): string

Returns key/constraint name for given type. Some drivers might not support all the types (e.g. mysql and sqlite enforce the PK name).

NamingStrategy.aliasName(entityName: string, index: number): string

Returns alias name for given entity. The alias needs to be unique across the query, which is by default ensured via appended index parameter. It is optional to use it as long as you ensure it will be unique.

NamingStrategy.inverseSideName(entityName: string, propertyName: string, kind: ReferenceKind): string

Returns the name of the inverse side property. Used in the EntityGenerator with bidirectionalRelations option. The default implementation will vary based on the property kind:

• M:N relations will be named as ${propertyName}Inverse (the property name is inferred from pivot table name).
• Other relation kinds will use the target entity name, with first character lowercased, and Collection appended in case it's a 1:M collection.

This behavior changed in v6.3, before that, all the properties were named with the Inverse suffix as the M:N relations are now.

NamingStrategy.manyToManyPropertyName(ownerEntityName: string, targetEntityName: string, pivotTableName: string, ownerTableName: string, schemaName?: string): string

Returns the property name for a many-to-many relation. Used in the EntityGenerator when generating M:N relations from pivot tables. The default implementation strips the owner table name prefix from the pivot table name and converts it to a property name using columnNameToProperty.

For example, with a pivot table author_books and owner table author, the default implementation returns books.

NamingStrategy.discriminatorColumnName(baseName: string): string

Returns the discriminator column name for polymorphic relations. The baseName is the discriminator property base name (e.g., likeable), and the default implementation appends Type and converts to column format (e.g., likeable_type).