pgrest

WARNING: this is work in progress and everything is likely to change!

PgREST is...

• a JSON document store
• running inside PostgreSQL
• working with existing relational data
• capable of loading Node.js modules
• compatible with MongoLab's REST API

Want to learn more? See the wiki.

Installation

You need to install the plv8js extension for postgresql. See Installation for details. PostgreSQL 9.0 is required. We recommend using 9.2.

Once you are have plv8js. use npm to install pgrest:

% npm i -g pgrest

When installing from git checkout, make sure you do npm i before npm i -g .

Trying pgrest:

% psql test
test=# CREATE TABLE foo (id int, info json);
CREATE TABLE
test=# INSERT INTO foo VALUES (1, '{"f1":1,"f2":true,"f3":"Hi I''m \"Daisy\""}');
INSERT 0 1

% pgrest --db test
Serving `test` on http://127.0.0.1:3000/collections

You can now access foo content with http://127.0.0.1:3000/collections/foo

Reading:

curl http://127.0.0.1:3000/collections/foo?q={"id":1}

The parameter is similar to MongoLab's REST API for listing documents: https://support.mongolab.com/entries/20433053-rest-api-for-mongodb

Writing:

echo '{"id": 5,"info": {"counter":5} }' | curl -D - -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -X POST -d @- http://localhost:3000/collections/foo

Socket.io

PgREST can handle socket.io connection with --websocket flag

pgrest --db test --websocket

You can connect to PgREST with socket.io-client. All REST api is exposed to socket.io client as well. check test for usage.

<script src="http://HOST:PORT/socket.io/socket.io.js"></script>

<script>
var socket = io.connect('http://HOST:PORT');
socket.on("complete", function (data) {
  // data = REST API return value
});
socket.emit("GET:foo");
</script>

More importantly, socket.io client can subscribe to a collection. Any new item being inserted into the collection will notify the client.

var socket = io.connect('http://HOST:PORT');
s.on("CHANNEL:foo", function (data) {
  // called every time something is inserted into foo
});
s.emit("SUBSCRIBE:foo");

PgBase

PgBase is an attempt to built a firebase-compatible API on top of PgREST

var ref = new PgBase("http://127.0.0.1:3000/foo");
ref.on("child_added", function(it) {
    $("#log").append(it.info.bar);
});

ref.push({_id:3, info: { bar: "Ke"}});

check out example/pgbase/pgbase.html and client/ref.ls for some infomation.

Document coming soon.

Developing

Runing test:

createdb test
export TESTDBUSERNAME=postgres # optional
export TESTDBNAME=test
npm i
npm run test

Additional web server support

In addition to the bundled pgrest frontend, you can also use the following frontend:

• Perl: Plack::App::PgREST
• Using ngx_postgres (experimental)