Specifying specific fields with Sequelize (NodeJS) instead of *

Alright so I have a project in NodeJS where I'm utilizing Sequelize for a MySQL ORM. The thing works fantastically however I'm trying to figure out if there is a way to specify what fields are being returned on a query basis or if there's even a way just to do a .query() somewhere.

For example in our user database there can be ridiculous amounts of records and columns. In this case I need to return three columns only so it would be faster to get just those columns. However, Sequelize just queries the table for everything "*" to fulfill the full object model as much as possible. This is the functionality I'd like to bypass in this particular area of the application.

You have to specify the attributes as a property in the object that you pass to findAll():

Project.findAll({attributes: ['name', 'age']}).on('success', function (projects) {
  console.log(projects);
});

How I found this:

The query is first called here: https://github.com/sdepold/sequelize/blob/master/lib/model-definition.js#L131
Then gets constructed here: https://github.com/sdepold/sequelize/blob/master/lib/connectors/mysql/query-generator.js#L56-59

Try this in new version

template.findAll({
    where: {
        user_id: req.params.user_id 
    },
    attributes: ['id', 'template_name'], 
}).then(function (list) {
    res.status(200).json(list);
})

Use the arrays in the attribute key. You can do nested arrays for aliases.

Project.findAll({
  attributes: ['id', ['name', 'project_name']],
  where: {id: req.params.id}
})
.then(function(projects) {
  res.json(projects);
})

Will yield:

SELECT id, name AS project_name FROM projects WHERE id = ...;

All Answers are correct but we can also use include and exclude as well

Model.findAll({
  attributes: { include: ['id'] }
});

Model.findAll({
  attributes: { exclude: ['createdAt'] }
});

Source