Allowing raw limits

Environment

Knex version: 0.95.11 Database + version: Materialize 0.9.10 (based on Postgres) OS: Ubuntu 20

Feature discussion / request

1. Explain what is your use case

Materialize (https://github.com/MaterializeInc/materialize) doesn’t allow prepared values for LIMIT. As far as I can tell, Knex always makes the LIMIT value a prepared value. The only way to hardcode it in the query is something like:

knex('foo')
  .orderByRaw(`1 limit ${limit}`);

Would it be possible to have a raw limit value?

1. Explain what kind of feature would support this

Allow .limit(raw(10)).

1. Give some API proposal, how the feature should work

Make .limit() accept raw() or add .limitRaw()

[OlivierCavadenti]

@Linksku I made a PR where you can make this two syntaxes :

knex('foo')
  .orderBy('1')
  .limit(1, { skipBinding: true })
  .offset(2, { skipBinding: true });

or shorter:

knex('foo')
  .orderBy('1')
  .limit(1, true)
  .offset(2, true);

Feel free to post comments on the PR

[sebastianoblom]

I ran into this problem today. SphinxQL, which is a dialect for SphinxSearch ( fulltext search server - http://sphinxsearch.com/ ) uses for format offset, limit instead of limit 1 offset 2 when using limits.

The only way I have found using knex qb around this problem is to append raw sql to the raw query-string. Like so;

let query = sphinx
  .select(['id'])
  .from('myIndex')
  .orderBy([{ column: 'createdAt', order: 'desc' }])
  .boundingBox({ ne, sw })
  .match(text)
  
  // append offset, limit shorthand style as sphinx does not support offset ${offset}
  const result = await sphinx.raw(`${query.toQuery()} limit ${offset}, ${limit};SHOW META;`)

The ability to extend the qb with something like limitRaw(offset, limit) => ´${offset}, ${limit}´ would really help, but seems not possible with current restrictions. Or am I missing something or any other ideas?