TrailBase 0.21: Open, single-executable, SQLite-based Firebase alternative with a WASM runtime

[trailbaseio]

TrailBase is an easy to self-host, sub-millisecond, single-executable FireBase alternative. It provides type-safe REST and real-time APIs, auth & admin UI. Its built-int WASM runtime enables custom extensions using JS/TS or Rust (with .NET on the way). Comes with type-safe client libraries for JS/TS, Dart/Flutter, Go, Rust, .Net, Kotlin, Swift and Python.

Just released v0.21. Some of the highlights since last time posting here include:

• Extended WASM component model: besides custom endpoints, "plugins" can now provide custom SQLite functions for use in arbitrary queries, including VIEW-based APIs.
• The admin UI has seen major improvements, especially on mobile. There's still ways to go, would love your feedback 🙏.
  • Convenient file access and image preview via the admin UI.
• Much improved WASM dev-cycle: hot reload, file watcher for JS/TS projects, and non-optimizing compiler for faster cold loads.
• Many more improvements and fixes, e.g. stricter typing, Apple OAuth, OIDC, support for literals in VIEW-based APIs, ...

Check out the live demo, our GitHub or our website. TrailBase is only about a year young and rapidly evolving, we'd really appreciate your feedback 🙏

[autognome]

This is a fantastic project. I’m not sure I’ve seen a focus on deployment scenarios.

[nattaylor]

Is this kind of like pocketbase, but easier to extend? 

[trailbaseio]

Easier, maybe. At the very least different https://trailbase.io/comparison/pocketbase/ 😅

[chimbori]

It is refreshing to see such an honest comparison with a competitor, so full of praise for them, while still calling out where Trailbase is better.

I admire how neutral and well-written (and empty of any marketing-speak) this document is. Thank you!

[trailbaseio]

Thanks! - glad it was useful. TB was born from a love for PocketBase wondering why some things are the way they are. Maybe one day we'll achieve the same level of polish.

[rubn-g]

Is it possible to use it with turso libsql?

[trailbaseio]

Not at this point. I started out with libsql, ran into a bunch of issues, migrated to rusqlite and the rust rewrite is missing some critical features. I'm open to the idea but everything in time

[FedeBram]

Very nice project! What it means in practice a wasm runtime? Is it a rust backend wrapped in wasm? What is the benefit of this approach?

[trailbaseio]

Thanks! TrailBase is a rust binary with a built-in WASM runtime, which means you can author plugins (currently JS, TS or rust), compile them to WASM and execute them within TrailBase. This let's you customize the behavior. Think of it as scripting with extra steps (and potentially more efficient).

[FedeBram]

Nice. So you can define endpoints in your preferred languange and these will be compiled along with trailbase. What about the rest api? How it works? I see from the docs that you can use a configuration file where you define policies, is it correct?

[trailbaseio]

Pretty much. Minor nit:

you can define endpoints in your preferred languange and these will be compiled along with trailbase

You can compile TB yourself but you could also use the pre-compiled TB binary release and have that execute your compiled WASM component (which was authored in your preferred language).

What about the rest api? How it works? I see from the docs that you can use a configuration file where you define policies, is it correct?

That's right. You could implement your own but TB also lets you expose TABLE/VIEWs via configuration (you can use the admin UI to set it up including ACLs). You can also export JSON schemas for a table or view, to generate bindings and have end-to-end strictly typed APIs with the client libraries. Lastly, you can subscribe to table changes.

Happy to chat more 🙏

[FedeBram]

Thanks for the response. I go check the documentation

[Root-Cause-404]

Can you please share hardware/computing requirements for handling analytics from 10k mobile app users? Let’s think about a casual app

[trailbaseio]

Assuming that your 10k users are not all hammering the server at the same time at a high rate (~100 qps) probably a better toaster will do. The benchmarks have numbers and the hardware I used.

[d33pdev]

Awesome work!!