[BUG]: Insert empty array should be valid

[jakeleventhal]

What version of drizzle-orm are you using?

0.29.2

What version of drizzle-kit are you using?

0.20.9

Describe the Bug

drizzle-orm/drizzle-orm/src/pg-core/query-builders/insert.ts

Line 50 in d535e0b

throw new Error('values() must be called with at least one value');

Why would this not just be a no-op?

Expected behavior

If the values parameter is an object, I would expect a required value but if it is an array, I think length 0 is acceptable input.

Environment & setup

No response

[Angelelz]

I don't think you should just delete this type of safeguards and not include tests verifying it didn't break another area of the codebase.
BTW, If you want to do something similar to what it seems like you want, the tested way is:

await db.insert(users).values({});

See for example this test. And the test right after that one.

The problem with accepting an empty array, is that it disables all the type guards around the inserted value.
Say you have a table with not null values without default like this:

const myTable = pgTable("my_table", {
  id: serial('id').primaryKey(),
  name: text('name').notNull()
}
// if you attempt to insert the way you describe like this:
const insertedValue: typeof myTable.$inferInsert[] = []; // an empty array is a valid array for anything.

// This next line is going to fail at the database level 
const response = await db.insert(myTable).values(insertedValue);

Instead, you could use an empty object, to signify that you want to insert one row to the DB and the types will check it.

[jakeleventhal]

What would you say then to the idea of having some special exception raised (to skip all the logic of even contacting the db) and just return [] typed as the proper type but with length of 0

[Angelelz]

I don't think this would be actionable until #376 is closed. And to be honest with you, I personally don't think it's a good idea. I don't really know why us dev just don't want to deal with errors.
IMO, drizzle definitely needs to tell the user that an error has occurred, and returning an empty array is not the way to do that properly.

[jakeleventhal]

I don't disagree. I will close this and the PR