Connecting to Supabase with StepZen featuring Paul Copplestone | StepZen
Published:
Anthony Campolo and Paul Copplestone, CEO of Supabase, discuss the open source Firebase alternative and demonstrates connecting it to StepZen for GraphQL integration.
Episode Summary
In this episode, Paul Copplestone, CEO of Supabase, joins Anthony Campolo to discuss Supabase, an open-source Firebase alternative, and demonstrate how to connect it with StepZen for GraphQL integration. They cover Supabase’s core features, including its Postgres database, authentication, and storage capabilities. Paul explains Supabase’s focus on developer experience and open-source tools. The conversation touches on Supabase’s recent developments, including the launch of function hooks and their growing community on Discord. Anthony demonstrates how to set up a Supabase project, create tables, and use StepZen to generate a GraphQL API for the Supabase REST endpoints. They discuss the benefits of GraphQL as an API aggregator and Supabase’s approach to exposing Postgres functionality. The episode concludes with insights into Supabase’s recent fundraising and future plans for building in public.
Chapters
00:00 - Introduction and Supabase Overview
Paul Copplestone, CEO of Supabase, is introduced and provides an overview of Supabase as an open-source Firebase alternative. He explains that Supabase focuses on building Firebase-like features using existing open-source tools, with Postgres as the core database. Paul highlights Supabase’s emphasis on developer experience and mentions key features such as authentication, database access, storage, and functions. The discussion touches on Supabase’s philosophy of providing both integrated services and the ability to use individual components separately.
02:56 - Setting Up a Supabase Project
Anthony demonstrates the process of creating a new Supabase project through the dashboard. Paul explains the backend infrastructure that gets spun up, including the database, auth server, RESTful API, API gateway, and storage server. They discuss the project creation time and potential future improvements to make it faster. Anthony then shows how to create tables in the Supabase dashboard, explaining the default columns and best practices for setting up database tables. Paul provides insights into choosing column types and the benefits of using UUIDs for IDs in distributed systems.
08:05 - Connecting Supabase to StepZen
The focus shifts to connecting the Supabase project with StepZen to create a GraphQL API. Anthony explains the process of setting up a StepZen project, including creating configuration files and defining GraphQL types and queries. He demonstrates how to use StepZen’s @rest directive to connect to Supabase’s REST endpoints and handle authentication. The chapter covers creating queries and mutations for both reading and writing data to the Supabase database through the generated GraphQL API.
22:27 - Exploring Supabase Features and Recent Developments
Paul discusses recent developments in Supabase, including the introduction of function hooks. He explains how these hooks can be used to trigger HTTP requests based on database events. Anthony and Paul explore the function hooks interface in the Supabase dashboard, demonstrating how to set up a hook. The conversation then shifts to Supabase’s recent success, including their Series A funding and the launch of their Discord community. Paul shares insights into the benefits of using Discord for community engagement and how it has improved their ability to interact with users and library maintainers.
33:22 - Future Plans and Closing Thoughts
The final chapter covers Supabase’s plans for the future. Paul mentions their efforts to build an “about” site to showcase interviews and podcasts. He also discusses their intention to continue building in public, particularly focusing on the dashboard (studio) development. Paul explains their goal of aligning their hosted platform with the open-source self-hosted version to prevent divergence. The episode concludes with information on how viewers can get involved with Supabase through various channels, including Twitter, YouTube, and Discord.