I was checking Sequelize's examples and documentation the other day, and I came across:

Albums.update(myAlbumDataObject,
{ where: 
    { id: req.params.albumId },
    returning: true /*or: returning: ['*'], depending on version*/
});

I was very exited when I saw this. A very good way to avoid quite a few lines of code. What I was doing before was to get the object by Model.findOne(), re-set every field to their new values and invoke the instance method .save(), instead of using a static method like that.

Needless to say I was quite happy and satisfied when I saw that such static method existed, disappointing however, was to learn the method only returns the instance it updates if you're running Sequelize with PostgreSQL.

Very sad to learn that, as I'm using MySQL.

The method sure, issues a SQL statement containing the proper UPDADE string in it, but that's it. I don't know if it hit anything, and I don't have a copy of the updated data to return.

Turns out I need a Model.findOne() first, in order to know if that object exists with that id(and/or other filtering parameters), the Model.update() to issue the updates and finally a Model.findByPk() to return the updated model to the layer above (all of it inside a transaction, naturally). That's too much code!

Also during the update, if there's a UniqueConstraintError exception thrown (witch can be quite common), it's errors[] array carries no valid model 'instance', it's just 'undefined', so it complicates matters if you want details about what happened and/or throw custom error messages defined inside the models.

My questions are: Are there workarounds out there better than those I'm already implementing? Any sequelize plugins that may give me that with MySQL? Any sequelize beta code that can give me that? Is there any effort by the part of the sequelelize dev team to give us that? I'd appreciate any help given.

I'm running Sequelize version is 6.7.0, with Node.js v14.17.5.

Ps.: I even realized now that static Model.update() under MySQL will even update something that doesn't exist without complaining about it.