Open Source Firebase?

Open Source Firebase?

Today, I will be showing you an amazing technology I discovered called Supabase. Supabase is this amazing database. It is (as they call it) a free and open source alternative to Firebase. That's right! Free and open source. Now you might be thinking that there must be some sort of catch. Actually, there is. A good catch. Supabase is a Postgres database that means you get features like SQL connectors etc. Not just that, Supabase is also very user friendly with unique features like documentation and APIs.

Let's take a look at the main features. Head over to Supabase' website to know more.

  • Specially-Curated Docs: Supabase gives you this documentation feature which generates documentation for your API. This documentation is basically, a guide to using Supabase with the API that Supabase provides for you. This guide has your client keys and service keys automatically added. All you have to do is, copy the code and add it to your app. Each and everything is explained properly and nicely.

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  • Realtime Database: Now as I said, this is not exactly a NoSQL database. It is a table-based database rather than a document-based, as you MongoDB fans would know. This does not mean that it is useless and if you don't know SQL, you can't work with it. Supabase provides you with query templates which you can use. It creates the query for you and you can simply run the query and see the result as a well formatted table which you can then super easily edit with their web interface.

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  • API: We previously talked a bit about the API created by Supabase for you. Well, yes. Supabase creates a cool REST API for you which you can use. I mean, why do you even need Express js when you have Supabase. Express is really just used for making an API. But you wouldn't create an API for your users with Supabase. Instead, you could use the API provided by Supabase as a base API and build a wrapper around it. Supabase also allows GraphQL queries if you are from that kind of background.

These are pretty much all the features which I love and are better than Firebase. I mean, there are like tens and hundreds of more reasons but these are the main one. I request you all to explore Supabase, give it a try and comment down what you thought of it. Do you agree with me when I say it is better than Firebase?