Inserting empty array inserts a record with default values.

knex('test').insert({}).toString()
"insert into "test" default values"
knex('test').insert([{}]).toString()
"insert into "test" default values"

These two use cases make sense, but I think that the logic has incorrectly been extended to the following:

knex('test').insert([]).toString()
"insert into "test" default values"

Can I propose that inserting an empty array should either be a no-op or throw an error?

I can’t think of a case where an empty array would be intentionally used to to insert a single record. A no-op would be ideal, this way it saves the client checking for empty arrays on every insert.

At the moment I use this (shitty) workaround:

safeInsert = (k, table, rows, returning) ->
  if _.isEmpty rows then [] else k(table).insert rows, returning or 'id'

[PierBover]

If anyone stumbles upon this, the only way this works is by inserting one element at a time with:

.insert({});
.insert({});

IMO .insert([{},{}]); makes sense (although it doesn’t work);

[wubzz]

Closing this as the original issue has already been adjusted by Tim into a noop long ago.

Unfortunately the noop in this case is an empty SQL string sent to db. Imo a real noop would imply no database connection at all, but that can be a potential improvement.