Skip to main content

What is Supabase?

Supabase is an open source Firebase alternative, based on Postgres.

Getting Started​

Local supabase instance​

To install the supabase locally, follow https://supabase.com/docs/guides/local-development/cli/getting-started?queryGroups=platform&platform=windows Installing as a dev dependency doesn't always work well, so it is recommended to install for your OS.

Install Docker Desktop. Make sure you have the docker app open.

Run supabase start (Ensure you run it on the project folder root.) Run supabase status Create a .env.local file at the project root (same level as .env) and fill in the keys with values from the command above:

SUPABASE_API_URL=<API URL>
SUPABASE_KEY=<anon key>
SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY=<service_role key>

Run yarn db:seed to run the DB migration scripts and update your local database schema. You will have to run this again whenever there are DB schema changes.

Now you can start the project with yarn start. To sign-up locally, you can get the email confirmation link at http://localhost:54324/monitor

Updating local supabase​

https://supabase.com/docs/guides/local-development/cli/getting-started?queryGroups=platform&platform=macos#updating-the-supabase-cli

Using online Supabase free version​

Create your Supabase instance​

You can also use the online Supabase free version. For this, create your Supabase account at https://supabase.com and create a new project. Install the Supabase CLI : https://supabase.com/docs/guides/local-development/cli/getting-started

First, connect to the Supabase CLI using supabase login. Get your project-id from your Supabase project, you can find it in the project settings general section. Now from the project root, run supabase link --project-ref your-project-id. Finally, push your schema using supabase db push.

To finish you should fill the .env.local file with the values from the "Data API" section of your project settings:

SUPABASE_API_URL=<API URL>
SUPABASE_KEY=<anon key>
SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY=<service_role key>

Migrations​

We use Supabase Declarative Schemas feature. Schema changes must be made in the /supabase/schemas folder, following the current pattern (1 sql file per feature). After making the schema changes, a migration file needs to be generated, use this command: supabase db diff --file [migration_name]

Running Cypress Tests​

Create a .env.local file at the packages/cypress folder SUPABASE_API_URL=your_api_key (probably http://127.0.0.1:54321) SUPABASE_KEY=your_key SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY=your service key

All done! Tests will use your local database. More info about how it works below.

Supabase Edge Functions​

Currently used for customizing Auth Emails. Supabase Auth Hooks have a timeout of 5 seconds which can easily be exceeded. To reduce the risk, the resend call is not awaited. If it is exceeded, the user gets an error on the UI, but still receives the email and can continue his flow. Haven't managed to run the functions locally yet (contributions welcome!).

Cypress with Supabase​

Running cypress tests locally will use the local database, while running on CI will use the QA database. For each test run, a new tenant_id is generated, which has a few benefits:

  • ensures no conflicts between parallel test runs
  • easier to cleanup
  • if the data isn't cleaned for some reason, it won't affect other runs For each test file, there should be a before and after block to, respectively, seed and clean the database.

Local firebase sync testing/debugging​

This is temporary until we fully migrate to supabase! We can create and deploy the sync function to the firebase dev environment. Then, using ngrok, expose our local supabase url to the internet, and point the firebase function to it. (ngrok http http://127.0.0.1:54321)

To authenticate, we need to create these 3 secrets, for each firebase project: firebase functions:secrets:set SUPABASE_API_URL firebase functions:secrets:set SUPABASE_API_KEY firebase functions:secrets:set TENANT_ID (Check values with firebase functions:secrets:access SECRET_NAME)