Ask HN: FastAPI + Supabase = Overkill?

2 points by devbit 1 year ago | 3 comments

So I have my API built with FastAPI on top of PostgreSQL. Everything except auth is ready. I love FastAPI, but I miss a killer feature from Django: the admin panel over my data. I saw a few options for FastAPI like SQLAdmin, but I’ve never tried Supabase (or Directus). They seem to have feature-rich admin dashboards and built-in auth systems. Would it be a good idea to use Supabase as an admin panel for my project while keeping everything else in FastAPI as it is? Can I use my existing database with Supabase without breaking everything? Also, is it possible to integrate their auth system with FastAPI endpoints? Or will it end up being a mess? Maybe there are other options?

threecheese 1 year ago |

Non-authoritative answers:

I don’t recall the names, but in doing some research on Postgres frontends recently I did find projects in github that integrated fastapi and Supabase auth (IIRC they support a bunch of auth backends, right?). Go forth and search lol

From a can-I-swap-out-my-database perspective, I believe the answer is Yes. The supabase open source tools (I am assuming you want to host it yourself, and just about everything they offer is open source) sit in front of the database instance(s) - the services for Functions, rest api wrapper, management tool, and realtime subscriptions are written in typescript and consume the database like your app does. You don’t need to run all of these services. They probably install their own management tables though.

AFAICT, it doesnt require any pg extensions of its own, though some of its functionalities do require extensions.

WRT overkill, if you don’t mind being the operator of some docker containers, and don’t use all the feature magic like Realtime, you’ll have some cheap database management. Overkill might be running 100 of them :) If you aren’t planning on hosting yourself, and don’t mind requiring an internet connection for your app, then the math is easy: is the money out worth the time you get back?

devbit 1 year ago | |

I plan to host the entire stack myself. I'm just concerned that Supabase might alter my database. Also, I'm unsure whether to proxy my database requests from my FastAPI app through Supabase (they seem to have a Python SDK) or leave it as it is now. I have PgBouncer, so I guess I don't need their custom balancer, and beyond that, it might not offer much. I'm just curious if such a setup has been used in practice and how successful it has been.

threecheese 1 year ago | | |

I’m looking at it for the realtime channels feature WAL to websockets), and knowing that somebody is running the open source thing in production is comforting. Good luck.