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I love the innovation coming out of Supabase and want use it, but I feel like the team ought to focus on polishing what is already there before investing so muc

I love the innovation coming out of Supabase and want use it, but I feel like the team ought to focus on polishing what is already there before investing so much in R&D. Make the platform SDKs to feature parity, make RLS easier to use, improve auth (for ex add anonymous users and native login), polish file uploads, etc. Supabase has a ton of potential, so hopefully this is taken as constructive feedback! Happy to provide more details on our experience.

ddeck 3y ago
I agree with all of these points. I really enjoy using Supabase, but it does feel like 95% of the effort is on releasing new features. The mentioned migrations for example, don't work if your database is not very simple (e.g. triggers typically won't work because the dependency order is wrong, custom types are not supported, etc.), and this has been the case for some time. The documentation for the most basic functionality is also quite poor and requires digging through the TS source for detail. For example, here's the JS lib auth signInWithPassword function: Log in an existing user with an email and password or phone and password. Requires either an email and password or a phone number and password. Parameters: credentials (required) SignInWithPasswordCredentials [no link to what this is] And an example is given: const { data, error } = await supabase.auth.signInWithPassword({ email: 'example@email.com', password: 'example-password', }) That's all. There is no explanation of what data/error might return, error conditions, whether it can throw, etc. Looking at the source, the are a variety of additional parameters (user meta data, captchaTokens ) that are not mentioned at all. The site has various articles, howtos, videos etc. that explain different bits of functionality, but the core reference is incomplete and it's a pain to dig through blog posts to discover basic functionality. To be clear, I think it's a great product, and the open source aspect and great communication from the team is a big plus, but I do think more time could be spent getting the basic product right before chasing 100s of new features.
cjonas 3y ago
100% agree... I've been using super base for a new project for a few months and while overall I'm impressed, there are just too many bugs and partially rolled out features. Here's my current gripe list: - features/ui missing from local development - more secure triggering of edge functions from database (currently have to hardcode key in SQL) - template URL support for edge function - source maps are broken in edge functions
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- laktek 3y ago
  Hey @cjonas, I'm a developer on Supabase Edge Functions team. We do have plans to improve the current database trigger behavior. Will share more updates on this in the coming months. Can you explain what do you mean by template URLs? Do you mean route params like `/v1/functions/users/:id`? If so, you can use a framework like Oak[1] to handle them. Edge Functions will make the full path including querystring available to the router. Also, you can use URLPattern API to match paths. Here's an example of RESTful API built using that: https://github.com/supabase/supabase/blob/master/examples/edge-functions/supabase/functions/restful-tasks/index.ts#L88-L89 https://github.com/supabase/supabase/blob/master/examples/ed... Source maps, is it broken during local dev or when you deploy the function? Also, by broken you mean in a stack trace the file / line numbers aren't accurate? [1] https://github.com/oakserver/oak https://github.com/oakserver/oak
  - cjonas 3y ago
    > We do have plans to improve the current database trigger behavior. Will share more updates on this in the coming months. Excited to hear more! Being able to trigger functions from DB & cron triggers without having to hardcode a secret (which causes them to end up in migrations files) will be a huge improvement. > Can you explain what do you mean by template URLs? Oh, I had no idea that the functions routes were "wild card"! I don't think that's mentioned anywhere in the documentation, btw. > Source maps, is it broken during local dev or when you deploy the function? Sorry, I actually mean "import-maps": https://github.com/supabase/cli/issues/1338 https://github.com/supabase/cli/issues/1338 "Source maps" (does deno actually use source maps?) ARE broken as well. EG: The line numbers in runtime don't line up with the function code in the IDE or even that is in the docker volume.
    - laktek 3y ago
      > Oh, I had no idea that the functions routes were "wild card"! I don't think that's mentioned anywhere in the documentation, btw. Good point! will update the docs. > Sorry, I actually mean "import-maps": https://github.com/supabase/cli/issues/1338 https://github.com/supabase/cli/issues/1338 I'll take a look at this issue. We've improved import map resolution in the last couple of CLI releases. But it looks like there are more edge cases.
kiwicopple 3y ago
> focus on polishing what is already there before investing so much in R&D fwiw, this post is exactly that. Everything in this release is an improvement to existing functionality within the CLI, as response to similar feedback we received here[0]. There are a lot of "behind the scenes" improvements which don't get visibility on HN - only new features tend to get upvoted so I think we have a reputation which isn't representative of our day-to-day focus. That said, we know there are a lot of shortcomings remaining (as you point out, and the comments below). Please do continue to share details on your experience, in the github issues preferably, so that we can focus on the most important tasks first. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36006018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36006018

ddeck 3y ago

I agree with all of these points. I really enjoy using Supabase, but it does feel like 95% of the effort is on releasing new features. The mentioned migrations for example, don't work if your database is not very simple (e.g. triggers typically won't work because the dependency order is wrong, custom types are not supported, etc.), and this has been the case for some time. The documentation for the most basic functionality is also quite poor and requires digging through the TS source for detail. For example, here's the JS lib auth signInWithPassword function: Log in an existing user with an email and password or phone and password. Requires either an email and password or a phone number and password. Parameters: credentials (required) SignInWithPasswordCredentials [no link to what this is] And an example is given: const { data, error } = await supabase.auth.signInWithPassword({ email: 'example@email.com', password: 'example-password', }) That's all. There is no explanation of what data/error might return, error conditions, whether it can throw, etc. Looking at the source, the are a variety of additional parameters (user meta data, captchaTokens ) that are not mentioned at all. The site has various articles, howtos, videos etc. that explain different bits of functionality, but the core reference is incomplete and it's a pain to dig through blog posts to discover basic functionality. To be clear, I think it's a great product, and the open source aspect and great communication from the team is a big plus, but I do think more time could be spent getting the basic product right before chasing 100s of new features.

cjonas 3y ago

100% agree... I've been using super base for a new project for a few months and while overall I'm impressed, there are just too many bugs and partially rolled out features. Here's my current gripe list: - features/ui missing from local development - more secure triggering of edge functions from database (currently have to hardcode key in SQL) - template URL support for edge function - source maps are broken in edge functions

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
laktek 3y ago
Hey @cjonas, I'm a developer on Supabase Edge Functions team. We do have plans to improve the current database trigger behavior. Will share more updates on this in the coming months. Can you explain what do you mean by template URLs? Do you mean route params like `/v1/functions/users/:id`? If so, you can use a framework like Oak[1] to handle them. Edge Functions will make the full path including querystring available to the router. Also, you can use URLPattern API to match paths. Here's an example of RESTful API built using that: https://github.com/supabase/supabase/blob/master/examples/edge-functions/supabase/functions/restful-tasks/index.ts#L88-L89 https://github.com/supabase/supabase/blob/master/examples/ed... Source maps, is it broken during local dev or when you deploy the function? Also, by broken you mean in a stack trace the file / line numbers aren't accurate? [1] https://github.com/oakserver/oak https://github.com/oakserver/oak
- cjonas 3y ago
  > We do have plans to improve the current database trigger behavior. Will share more updates on this in the coming months. Excited to hear more! Being able to trigger functions from DB & cron triggers without having to hardcode a secret (which causes them to end up in migrations files) will be a huge improvement. > Can you explain what do you mean by template URLs? Oh, I had no idea that the functions routes were "wild card"! I don't think that's mentioned anywhere in the documentation, btw. > Source maps, is it broken during local dev or when you deploy the function? Sorry, I actually mean "import-maps": https://github.com/supabase/cli/issues/1338 https://github.com/supabase/cli/issues/1338 "Source maps" (does deno actually use source maps?) ARE broken as well. EG: The line numbers in runtime don't line up with the function code in the IDE or even that is in the docker volume.
  - laktek 3y ago
    > Oh, I had no idea that the functions routes were "wild card"! I don't think that's mentioned anywhere in the documentation, btw. Good point! will update the docs. > Sorry, I actually mean "import-maps": https://github.com/supabase/cli/issues/1338 https://github.com/supabase/cli/issues/1338 I'll take a look at this issue. We've improved import map resolution in the last couple of CLI releases. But it looks like there are more edge cases.

kiwicopple 3y ago

> focus on polishing what is already there before investing so much in R&D fwiw, this post is exactly that. Everything in this release is an improvement to existing functionality within the CLI, as response to similar feedback we received here[0]. There are a lot of "behind the scenes" improvements which don't get visibility on HN - only new features tend to get upvoted so I think we have a reputation which isn't representative of our day-to-day focus. That said, we know there are a lot of shortcomings remaining (as you point out, and the comments below). Please do continue to share details on your experience, in the github issues preferably, so that we can focus on the most important tasks first. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36006018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36006018