Loading…
Supabase
Open-source backend platform providing PostgreSQL databases, authentication, storage, realtime APIs, and serverless functions.
- 227 posts summarised
- latest
The Good Stuff
Paid picks we use ourselves. Links carry a referral code — a subscription through one earns us a commission at no extra cost to you.
From their blog
Latest articles
React Native file upload with Supabase Storage
This tutorial shows how to build a React Native image-sharing or file-sharing app with Expo SDK49, Supabase Authentication, Expo Router v2, and Supabase Storage. It configures a Supabase project, turns off email confirmation for the tutorial, creates a private files bucket, and adds policies that constrain access to an authenticated user’s own folder. The React Native client stores sessions in AsyncStorage, uses the Image Picker and Expo File System, and initializes Supabase with environment-based URL and public key values. The resulting app supports account creation, sign-in, image selection, listing, download-based display, and deletion; resumable uploads are omitted because the attempted implementation produced files with zero bytes.
Supabase Launch Week 8 Hackathon
Supabase Launch Week 8 will run an asynchronous hackathon for new Open Source projects that use Supabase in some capacity. The event is listed as starting at 09:00 am PT on Friday 4 August 2023, with the main schedule ending on Sunday 13 August at 11:59 pm PT; the submission instructions separately give a deadline of 11:59 pm PT on Sunday 14 August 2023. Individuals or teams of up to five can build an app, tool, library, or other project in any language or framework, with all design and code created during the event. Judges will award winners and runners-up across five categories, including overall quality, AI use, technical impressiveness, visual appeal, and fun, while submissions must include source code and may earn extra points for a demo video.
Getting started with Flutter authentication
This tutorial shows how to add Google authentication to a cross-platform Flutter application using the Supabase SDK for Flutter. It explains OpenID Connect as a protocol built on OAuth 2.0, then configures Google Cloud client IDs for iOS, Android, and web, with Supabase using the web client ID to verify the supplied identity token. The sample initializes Supabase, starts Google sign-in through google_sign_in, passes the resulting access and ID tokens to signInWithIdToken, and listens for signed-in events to navigate from LoginScreen to ProfileScreen. The profile reads avatar_url and full_name from Supabase userMetadata, while a sign-out action returns the user to the login screen, producing a basic personalized app.
pgvector 0.4.0 performance
The post benchmarks pgvector 0.4.0 for approximate nearest-neighbor search and assesses whether PostgreSQL can support production-scale vector workloads. Using the ANN Benchmarks methodology, pre-warmed RAM, the dbpedia-entities-openai-1M dataset of 1 million 1,536-dimensional OpenAI embeddings, and Supabase ARM instances, it varies probes, lists, concurrency, and compute size. On an 8-core, 32 GB instance, pgvector reached 0.91 accuracy@10 at 380 QPS with 10 probes and 0.98 accuracy at 140 QPS with 40 probes; a 64-core, 256 GB server reached about 1,800 QPS at 0.91 accuracy. The results indicate predictable scaling, while higher lists can improve query speed at the cost of index-build time, and the roadmap identifies HNSW, product quantization, and parallel index builds as planned improvements.
What is new in PostgREST v11.1?
PostgREST v11.1 is available on the Supabase platform with configuration and querying improvements, plus a small set of documented breaking changes from v10. It lets JWT-authenticated impersonated roles such as anon, authenticated, and service_role receive ALTER ROLE settings, including statement timeouts, pg_plan_filter statement cost limits, and configurable transaction isolation levels. The release also supports bulk JSON inserts that preserve column defaults when defaultToNull is false, and adds any/all modifiers for several filters, including eq, like, ilike, and comparison filters. For HTTP clients outside Supabase libraries, Range is now ignored on non-GET requests and RPC requests no longer use the deprecated Prefer: params=multiple-objects header; existing Supabase projects can upgrade by pausing and unpausing.
Supabase Beta June 2023
Supabase’s June 2023 beta update announces product, tooling, authentication, billing, and community developments. Mozilla chose Supabase Vector and OpenAI for AI Help, an AI chatbot that supports search and discovery for MDN, while Supabase Auth added native Sign in with Apple and Google support for one-tap methods including web integrations and Chrome extensions. The Supabase CLI added Dashboard migration visibility with executed SQL, local serving for all Functions, and a usage flag for monitoring key Postgres statistics; Studio also gained usage, overage, plan-limit, subscription, billing, and compute-detail improvements. Other updates include Kakao login, a Realtime Inspector for testing endpoints with JWTs and Row Level Security policies, an object ID in Storage upload responses, OrioleDB parallel index builds, database partitioning guidance, community projects, and an upcoming Launch Week.
Native Mobile Auth Support for Google and Apple Sign in
Supabase has expanded its authentication support for native Apple and Google sign-in on iOS and Android, addressing a flow that previously required developers to send users through a web browser. Native apps built with Flutter or React Native can use OS-provided authentication dialogs across Apple platforms including iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS, while Android support covers all Android variants. Behind these methods, ID tokens issued by Apple or Google are validated by Supabase Auth to create accounts or link existing accounts based on email similarity. The same signInWithIdToken() method also enables Sign in with Apple JS, Google One Tap, and authentication in Chrome extensions; the Google One Tap example passes the provider’s credential and a matching nonce when one is supplied via data-nonce.
Supabase Beta May 2023
Supabase’s May 2023 update announces two major product areas: Supabase Vector, an open-source toolkit for storing, indexing, and querying Postgres vector embeddings at scale, and Supabase Vault, a Postgres extension and UI for encrypted secrets and data. Auth Helpers now support client and server use of the Next.js App Router and server-side authentication by default with PKCE. The release also adds Turnstile CAPTCHA support, password reauthentication nonces, Wrappers integrations for Firebase, Stripe, S3, and clickhouse, CLI deployment for all Edge Functions, custom and vanity domains, and generally available Image Transformation. Supabase says it reached 50,000 GitHub stars, while the team solicits Dashboard SQL Editor feedback and reports community projects, AI resources, and a first-ever Flutter Hackathon.
Flutter Hackathon Winners
The Flutter Hackathon winners were announced across categories including Best Overall Project, Best FlutterFlow Project, Best Dart Edge Project, Most Technically Impressive, and Most Visually Pleasing. Syno won Best Overall for concise video summaries, while Study Genius was runner-up; other recognized projects included Lord Of The Memes, ChatGlobe, Accident Detection, Caffeio, and their respective runners-up. ChatGlobe translates messages into multiple languages as they are sent using Dart Edge and the OpenAI API, while Accident Detection uses machine-learning techniques with accelerometer and GPS data to analyze accident-related changes in speed, direction, and impact force. Winners and runner-up teams receive limited Flutter Hackathon swag, and Syno’s creator also receives a Flutter-themed Supabase keyboard; the announcement also points to Flutter, Supabase, FlutterFlow, Edge Functions, and authentication guides for future projects.
Supabase Vecs: a vector client for Postgres
Vecs is a new Python library for managing embeddings in Postgres databases that use pgvector, offering a vector-store-like interface for table creation, indexing, querying, and metadata filtering. Collections are stored in a vecs schema with an id text primary key, a vector column, and JSONB metadata; queries support cosine distance, l2 distance, and maximum inner dot product, with optional filters and returned values. A short Python workflow can create a collection, upsert records, create an index after insertion, and search by vector; the collection can also be queried without an index. With Supabase, a collection can be exposed through a public-schema view and accessed from supabase-js, while proposed preprocessing transforms and an asynchronous client remain under debate.
ChatGPT plugins now support Postgres & Supabase
Retrieval plugins let ChatGPT access relevant content from private datasets by chunking documents, generating embeddings with OpenAI’s text-embedding-ada-002, and querying a vector database. The article describes Postgres and Supabase datastore implementations using pgvector, with a shared documents schema and a match_page_sections function that filters by source, author, document, and date before ranking vectors with inner product distance. It then gives a local example: downloading the Postgres 15 documentation as a PDF, uploading it through the plugin’s /upsert-file endpoint, and configuring environment variables for Supabase or Postgres. The example produced 7,904 document records, and an optional IVFFlat index can trade exact nearest-neighbor search for approximate search; after registering the local plugin in ChatGPT, users can ask questions answered from the documentation.
Building ChatGPT Plugins with Supabase Edge Runtime
A TypeScript template for ChatGPT Plugins runs on Supabase Edge Runtime and provides a path for exposing a TODO API to ChatGPT. The implementation serves the required ai-plugin.json manifest from an Edge Function because static file hosting is not currently supported, and generates an OpenAPI JSON document from endpoint JSDoc annotations with swagger-jsdoc. An Oak router defines TODO routes, while shared CORS headers allow requests from https://chat.openai.com and credentials. Docker configuration runs Edge Runtime locally with a bind-mounted functions directory, enabling changes without rebuilding and exposing requests through localhost:8000. The guide also covers local installation and testing through the ChatGPT UI, then deployment to Fly.io; it notes authentication as a possible next step.
Flutter Hackathon
Supabase announced a 10-day Flutter hackathon alongside new Flutter updates announced at Google I/O, inviting participants to build a new app with Flutter/Dart and Supabase in some capacity. Teams of one to five people can enter, with the event running from 7:00 am PT on May 12, 2023, through 11:59 pm PT on May 21, 2023. Submissions must include an accessible demo or demo video and are judged on creativity, smooth functionality, visual appeal, technical impressiveness, Supabase usage, and fun. Five award categories cover best overall, best FlutterFlow, best Dart Edge, most technically impressive, and most visually pleasing, with a winner and runner-up in each category. Rules require one submission per team, prohibit multiple team entries, require that project elements be created during the event, and state that developed intellectual property belongs to its team.
Supabase Beta April 2023
Supabase’s April 2023 Beta Update reports on Launch Week 7 and a broad set of product, ecosystem, and community announcements. It open-sources Logflare as Supabase Logs, adds a self-hostable Edge Runtime for Deno Functions, and presents Storage v3’s resumable uploads for files up to 50GB, with quality filters, Next.js support, and WebP support. Auth additions include SAML 2.0 SSO, PKCE, Sign in with Apple for iOS, and server-side support, while Studio 2.0 brings redesigns, developer-experience improvements, and new AI features. The update also announces dbdev, a PostgreSQL package manager, Trusted Language Extensions for Postgres, pg_graphql v1.2, search using GitHub Discussions, API report improvements, and a storage permission change, while noting Page Assist as the hackathon winner and Firecrawl’s move from Pinecone to Supabase for PostgreSQL vector embeddings.
Securing your Flutter apps with Multi-Factor Authentication
The tutorial presents a Flutter app that requires multi-factor authentication before users can view its content, using email and password login followed by authenticator-app verification. It uses Supabase for authentication, supabase_flutter for client integration, go_router for routes and redirects, and flutter_svg to display a QR code for authenticator enrollment. During signup, users confirm their email through a deep link, enroll MFA, and then verify a code; login applies a similar second step. iOS and Android deep-link configuration directs the confirmation callback to the enrollment route, while routing checks the session and authenticator assurance level to send users to registration, enrollment, or verification as appropriate. The stated outcome is that only users who have signed in via MFA can access the home page, while optional MFA is identified as a possible future variation.
Next steps for Postgres pluggable storage
PostgreSQL pluggable storage would let different tables in one database use storage engines optimized for transactional, analytical, or archival workloads, while allowing developers to build engines in an extensions-like model. PostgreSQL 12 added basic support through refactoring and expanding table access method APIs, initially to enable ZHeap, whose undo log showed promising results and addressed long-term table bloat, but work on ZHeap and TAM appears stalled. The current API has important gaps, including limited index flexibility, all-or-nothing index updates, and row-version identifiers tied to block and offset numbers; available options such as Citus Columnar Storage remain constrained by these limits. OrioleDB's upstreaming has reduced its fork's patchset from about 5,000 lines in PostgreSQL 14 to about 2,000 for PostgreSQL 16, raising the possibility that required changes could land in PostgreSQL 17.
Launch Week 7 Hackathon Winners
Supabase Launch Week 7 announces the winners of its hackathon, which introduced an AI theme and recognized projects across five categories. Page Assist won Best Overall for an open-source Chrome extension that lets users chat with webpages through the ChatGPT API, while other winners included Rect, Supathreads, Replay.ai, Supa0SQL, and Generation: Hotdog. The projects apply AI to educational content, blog-to-thread conversion, browsing-history search with cosine similarity, natural-language chart creation, and hotdog-image generation using OpenAI and Stable Diffusion APIs; runner-ups included tools for video chat, drum patterns, tweet scheduling, and music guessing. Members of the Best Overall winning team receive a limited-edition Launch Week 7 Keyboard, while winners and runner-ups in other categories receive Launch Week 7 swag kits, alongside guides for getting started with Supabase resources.
What's New in pg_graphql v1.2
pg_graphql v1.2 introduces several API features for projects using PostgreSQL 15.1.0.63 or higher, including reflection of views, materialized views, and foreign tables. Reflected views require a primary-key constraint supplied through a comment directive, while simple views also support insert and update mutation events. Filtering gains null and non-null checks plus like, ilike, and startsWith options; startsWith can use simple B-Tree indexes, while citext and PGroonga address scalability concerns for text filtering. The release adds functional @skip and @include directives and lets users define GraphQL descriptions for tables, views, and columns through comments. Planned work includes user-defined functions, nested inserts, and an alternative computed-relationships approach based on SQL functions returning SET OF.
dbdev: PostgreSQL Package Manager
database.dev is a public preview of dbdev, a PostgreSQL package manager whose registry is currently read-only and preloaded with packages demonstrating packaging and discovery possibilities. It aims to provide repeatable deployment of libraries and applications, with third-party publishing tools planned after community feedback, and uses organization- or user-namespaced package names to address name and typo squatting. The in-database client installs packages, which PostgreSQL then exposes as native extensions; dbdev adds major.minor.patch version constraints, while compatibility currently requires Supabase new projects or PostgreSQL with pg_tle and pgsql-http. Examples include a hybrid document-search backend, an index advisor that reports a sample total-cost reduction from 25.88 to 6.40, and administration views for database diagnostics. The preview depends on Trusted Language Extensions, and the post invites reports, feature ideas, and contributions while noting that pl/rust had not yet reached Supabase.
Launch Week 7 Community Highlights
Supabase reports community highlights from the past three months, covering ecosystem partnerships, self-hosting, Postgres extensions, client libraries, utilities, upstream work, and contributors. New collaborations include AWS RDS work on pg_tle and Trusted Language PL/Rust, Clickhouse bidirectional Postgres integration, LangChain vector-store and hybrid-search contributions, a Vercel and OpenAI GPT-search template, Doppler secret syncing, Redwood’s Prisma Quick Start, Dart Edge, and T3 Turbo. The update also describes self-hosting support for Logs and Edge Functions, new Digital Ocean and Stackgres entrants, and extensions including pgvector, HypoPG, pg_tle, PGroonga v3.0, LZ4 compression, and ICU support. It records new Swift, Python, and C# client libraries, cache helpers, Firebase-to-Supabase supashim, Postgres and OrioleDB patches, and recognition for contributors, while noting more than 48,000 GitHub stars.
Topics they write about
All topics →Weekly digest
The best engineering reads, once a week.