Blog post about how I went from shipping a popular ORM in 2012… to throwing it all away… to realizing that the database itself should be the single source of truth.
I'm releasing postgresql-codecs.java - a tiny, zero-dependency library that provides complete, lossless Codec<A> implementations for most standard PostgreSQL types.
It supports scalars, enums, domains, JSONB, geometric/network types, arrays of any depth, ranges/multiranges, composites, hstore, tsvector, and more — in both text and binary formats. Fully roundtrip-tested against real PostgreSQL.
Standard JDBC and R2DBC drivers have weak support for PostgreSQL's advanced types. Composites, nested arrays, and multiranges usually mean manual PGobject work and brittle converters.
postgresql-codecs.java gives you clean, composable, type-safe codecs with minimal boilerplate.
While building a Java generator for pGenie (SQL to Java compiler) I needed reliable, exact representations of composites, multiranges, and other advanced types. Existing Java libraries fell short, so I ported my Haskell library postgresql-types to pure Java.
Pair it with postgresql-jdbc.java for a batteries included integration.
Both libs are on Maven Central and MIT-licensed.
Feedback and PRs welcome!
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