PocketBase is an open source Go backend, consisting of:

• embedded database (SQLite) with realtime subscriptions
• built-in files and users management
• convenient Admin dashboard UI
• and simple REST-ish API

For documentation and examples, please visit https://pocketbase.io/docs.

⚠️ Although the web API definitions are considered stable, please keep in mind that PocketBase is still under active development and therefore full backward compatibility is not guaranteed before reaching v1.0.0.

API SDK clients

The easiest way to interact with the API is to use one of the official SDK clients:

• JavaScript - pocketbase/js-sdk (browser and node)
• Dart - soon

Overview

PocketBase could be used as a standalone app or as a Go framework/toolkit that enables you to build your own custom app specific business logic and still have a single portable executable at the end.

Installation

# go 1.18+
go get github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase

For Windows, you may have to use go 1.19+ due to an incorrect js mime type in the Windows Registry (see issue#6).

Example

package main

import (
    "log"
    "net/http"

    "github.com/labstack/echo/v5"
    "github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase"
    "github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase/apis"
    "github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase/core"
)

func main() {
    app := pocketbase.New()

    app.OnBeforeServe().Add(func(e *core.ServeEvent) error {
        // add new "GET /api/hello" route to the app router (echo)
        e.Router.AddRoute(echo.Route{
            Method: http.MethodGet,
            Path:   "/api/hello",
            Handler: func(c echo.Context) error {
                return c.String(200, "Hello world!")
            },
            Middlewares: []echo.MiddlewareFunc{
                apis.RequireAdminOrUserAuth(),
            },
        })

        return nil
    })

    if err := app.Start(); err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
}

Running and building

Running/building the application is the same as for any other Go program, aka. just go run and go build.

PocketBase embeds SQLite, but doesn't require CGO.

If CGO is enabled, it will use mattn/go-sqlite3 driver, otherwise - modernc.org/sqlite. You can enable and disable CGO by setting the CGO_ENABLED enviroment variable to 1 or 0 respectively.

Enable CGO only if you really need to squeeze the read/write query performance at the expense of complicating cross compilation.

To build the minimal standalone executable, like the prebuilt ones in the releases page, you can simply run go build inside the examples/base directory.

Testing

PocketBase comes with mixed bag of unit and integration tests. To run them, use the default go test command:

go test ./...

Check also the Testing guide to learn how to write your own custom application tests.

Security

If you discover a security vulnerability within PocketBase, please send an e-mail to support at pocketbase.io.

All reports will be promptly addressed and you'll be credited accordingly.

Contributing

PocketBase is free and open source project licensed under the MIT License.

You could help continuing its development by:

• Contribute to the source code
• Suggest new features and report issues
• Donate a small amount

Please note that PocketBase was initially created to serve as a new backend for my other open source project - Presentator (see #183), so all feature requests will be first aligned with what we need for Presentator v3.