Working with Databases in Go – GORM and SQL Connections

Using database/sql Directly

db, err := sql.Open("mysql", "user:password@tcp(127.0.0.1:3306)/dbname")
defer db.Close()

rows, err := db.Query("SELECT id, name FROM users")
for rows.Next() {
    var id int
    var name string
    rows.Scan(&id, &name)
    fmt.Println(id, name)
}

Using GORM (ORM Library)

GORM simplifies database interactions with struct-based models instead of raw SQL.

type User struct {
    ID   uint
    Name string
}

db, _ := gorm.Open(mysql.Open(dsn), &gorm.Config{})

db.Create(&User{Name: "Alice"})

var users []User
db.Find(&users)

Choosing Between Them

database/sql gives full control and is dependency-free, while GORM speeds up development with automatic migrations, associations, and query building at the cost of some added abstraction.