How to Use an ORM in Rust (Diesel vs SeaORM)

Use Diesel for compile-time SQL safety with macros or SeaORM for runtime flexibility with a fluent API. Add the crate to Cargo.toml, define your schema, and run migrations to start querying.

[dependencies]
diesel = { version = "2.2.10", features = ["postgres"] }
sea-orm = { version = "1.1", features = ["sqlx-postgres"] }

// Diesel: Define schema in src/schema.rs, then query
use diesel::prelude::*;
let conn = diesel::pg::PgConnection::establish(&db_url)?;
let users = users::table.load::<User>(&conn)?;

// SeaORM: Define entities, then query
use sea_orm::*;
let db = Database::connect("postgres://...").await?;
let users = User::find().all(&db).await?;

An ORM lets you talk to your database using Rust code instead of writing raw SQL strings. Diesel checks your queries at compile time to prevent errors, while SeaORM builds queries at runtime for more flexibility. Think of it as using a typed form to fill out data instead of writing a letter by hand.