Serverless APIs
Supabase auto-generates three types of API directly from your database schema.
- REST - connect to your database through a restful interface, directly from the browser.
- GraphQL - manipulate your database using a graph-like query language.
- Realtime - listen to database changes.
All the APIs are auto-generated from your database and are designed to get you building as fast as possible, without writing a single line of code.
You can use them directly from the browser (two-tier architecture), or as a complement to your own API server (three-tier architecture).
Features#
- Instant and auto-generated.
As you update your database the changes are immediately accessible through your API. - Self documenting.
Supabase generates documentation in the Dashboard which updates as you make database changes. - Secure.
The API is configured to work with PostgreSQL's Row Level Security, provisioned behind an API gateway with key-auth enabled. - Fast.
Our benchmarks for basic reads are more than 300% faster than Firebase. The API is a very thin layer on top of Postgres, which does most of the heavy lifting. - Scalable.
The API can serve thousands of simultaneous requests, and works well for Serverless workloads.
REST API #
Supabase provides a RESTful API using PostgREST. This is a very thin API layer on top of Postgres.
It provides everything you need from a CRUD API at the URL https://<project_ref>.supabase.co/rest/v1/.
The REST interface is automatically reflected from your database's schema and supports:
- Basic CRUD operations (Create/Read/Update/Delete)
- Arbitrarily deep relationships among tables/views, functions that return table types can also nest related tables/views.
- Works with Postgres Views, Materialized Views and Foreign Tables
- Works with Postgres Functions
- User defined computed columns and computed relationships
- Works with the Postgres security model - including Row Level Security, Roles, and Grants.
The REST API resolves all requests to a single SQL statement leading to fast response times and high throughput.
Reference:
GraphQL API #
Supabase uses pg_graphql to expose a GraphQL API endpoint at https://<project_ref>.supabase.co/graphql/v1/.
You can introspect and query the GraphQL API of an existing Supabase project within Studio here,
or navigate there manually at API Docs > GraphQL > GraphiQL.
The GraphQL interface is automatically reflected from your database's schema and supports:
- Basic CRUD operations (Create/Read/Update/Delete)
- Support for Tables, Views, Materialized Views, and Foreign Tables
- Arbitrarily deep relationships among tables/views
- User defined computed fields
- The Postgres security model - including Row Level Security, Roles, and Grants.
The GraphQL API resolves all requests in a single round-trip leading to fast response times and high throughput.
Reference:
Realtime API #
Supabase provides a Realtime API using Realtime. You can use this to listen to database changes over websockets. Realtime leverages PostgreSQL's built-in logical replication. You can manage your Realtime API simply by managing Postgres publications. Go to your project's Replication section to get started.