Is it possible to get the name of a table at runtime?

[ThomasVille]

Backend

SQLite

Diesel version

2.2.12

Diesel Features

sqlite, uuid, returning_clauses_for_sqlite_3_35, chrono

Operating System Version

Ubuntu 25.04 x86_64 GNU/Linux 6.14.0-32-generic

Third party libraries

No response

What do you want to do?

I'm trying to get the name of a table declared using the DSL like in the getting_started_step_1 example statically at runtime.

I didn't find anything in the self::schema::posts module so I looked at the expanded code of the example with cargo expand --lib and the only string for "posts" I found is an internal one that I'm likely not supposed to be able to access:

impl diesel::internal::table_macro::StaticQueryFragment for table {
    type Component = diesel::internal::table_macro::Identifier<'static>;
    const STATIC_COMPONENT: &'static Self::Component = &diesel::internal::table_macro::Identifier(
        "posts",
    );
}

I already looked at the documentation, the feature flags, the code of diesel and didn't find any solution.

Ideally I'd like to do something like:

println!("Table name: {}", self::schema::posts::table_name);

And it would print:

Table name: posts

Compile time error

No response

What code do you already have?

Right now, the only solution I see is to write a macro that allows me to write:

#[derive(Queryable, Selectable)]
#[diesel(table_name = crate::schema::posts)]
#[diesel(check_for_backend(diesel::sqlite::Sqlite))]
// Add a macro here that will extract the name of the module and inject the string in a static const.
#[table_name(crate::schema::posts)]
pub struct Post {
    pub id: i32,
    pub title: String,
    pub body: String,
    pub published: bool,
}


The macro would then generate something like:
```rust
trait HasTableName {
    const TABLE_NAME: &'static str;
}

impl HasTableName for Posts {
    const TABLE_NAME: &'static str = "posts";
}

So that I could get the name of the table with:

Posts::TABLE_NAME

Thanks to everyone reading my post.

### Additional details

_No response_

### Checklist

- [X] I have already looked over the [issue tracker](https://github.com/diesel-rs/diesel/issues) and the [discussion forum](https://github.com/diesel-rs/diesel/discussions) for similar possible closed issues.

[weiznich]

This information is currently not exposed in such a way.

It would be interesting to learn more about your use-case to understand if we should expose this information or if this is already covered by another API.

[mathewmeconry]

I currently run into a similar issue. I have a materialized view in my PostgreSQL database that I want to update in specific cases during the application lifecycle.
For now, I hardcoded the view name into the query REFRESH query, but it is not a good practice from my point of view.

[weiznich]

For this particular case you don't need to have access to the name as string as you can simply write your own custom query DSL extension for REFRESH.

Something like this should work:

#[derive(QueryId)]
struct Refresh<T>(T);

impl<T> QueryFragment<Pg> for Refresh<T> where T: Table {
     fn walk_ast<'b>(&'b self, mut pass: AstPass<'_, 'b, Pg>) -> QueryResult<()> {
          pass.push_sql("REFRESH ");
          self.0.walk_ast(pass)?;
          Ok(())
     }
}

impl<T> RunQueryDsl<PgConnection> for Refresh<T> {}

// use it like that:
Refresh(your::table).execute(conn)?;