Simplify Your Stack: A Deep Dive into PocketBase
Building a modern web application often feels like an exercise in assembling a complex puzzle. You need a database, an ORM, an API framework, an authentication system, a file storage solution, and an admin panel to manage it all. Each piece adds complexity, configuration overhead, and another potential point of failure. This complexity can be a major barrier, especially for indie developers, startups, and anyone looking to prototype an idea quickly.
What if you could have all of that in a single, self-contained file? That's the radical promise of PocketBase, an open-source, all-in-one backend written in Go. It bundles a database, real-time API, authentication, and a beautiful admin dashboard into one executable that you can run anywhere. It's a Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) like Firebase or Supabase, but one that you can host yourself with zero effort.
This article explores what makes PocketBase a compelling choice for your next project, its core features, and how you can use it both as a standalone service and as a powerful Go framework to add custom functionality.
What is PocketBase? The Backend in a Single File ๐ฆ
PocketBase is a single, portable executable that provides a complete backend system. When you run it, you instantly get:
- An Embedded SQLite Database: Leverages the power and reliability of SQLite in a single database file, eliminating the need for external database servers.
- A Built-in Admin Dashboard: A clean, intuitive web UI to manage your database schema, users, files, and access control rules without writing a single line of code.
- User Authentication: Ready-to-use auth with email/password, social logins via OAuth2 (Google, GitHub, etc.), and email verification/password reset flows.
- Real-time Subscriptions: The ability to subscribe to database changes in real-time, perfect for building collaborative or live-updating applications.
- A REST-ish API: As soon as you define a data "collection" (table) in the admin UI, PocketBase automatically generates a full set of secure CRUD API endpoints with powerful filtering, sorting, and expansion capabilities.
The deployment story is its most remarkable feature: you download the binary for your OS, run it, and you have a production-ready backend. It's that simple.
Core Features in Detail ๐
Let's break down the features that make PocketBase so efficient for developers.
The Admin Dashboard: Your Control Center
The first thing you interact with is the admin dashboard, and it's where PocketBase truly shines. From this UI, you can visually define your database collections, add fields (text, number, boolean, JSON, relations, etc.), and immediately see the results. You don't need to write migrations or use an ORM.
Crucially, the dashboard is also where you define API Rules. These are security rules that control who can perform what action (create, read, update, delete) on your data, using a simple syntax that can reference the authenticated user's properties.
Instant Authentication and Access Control
Setting up secure authentication is often a time-consuming and error-prone task. PocketBase handles it out of the box. You get a full-featured user management system with secure password handling and easy integration for third-party OAuth2 providers. This alone can save days or weeks of development time.
Real-time, On-Demand
For any collection you create, you can subscribe to changes from your client-side application. When a record is created, updated, or deleted, PocketBase pushes the changes to all subscribed clients. This enables you to build dynamic, real-time features with minimal effort.
Built-in File Storage
PocketBase provides a simple and secure way to handle file uploads. You can attach files to any record, and PocketBase manages the storage, serving, and access control for you. It even supports generating thumbnails on the fly and can be configured to use an S3-compatible service as its storage backend.
Two Ways to Use PocketBase: Standalone vs. Framework
PocketBase offers two primary modes of operation, catering to different levels of complexity.
1. As a Standalone Application
This is the most common and straightforward way to use PocketBase. You run the executable, and it serves the Admin UI and the API. Your frontend application (built with React, Vue, Svelte, etc.) then interacts with the PocketBase API using its client-side JavaScript SDK. This is the "self-hosted Firebase" model, giving you incredible speed for MVPs, internal tools, or simple app backends.
2. As a Go Framework
This is where PocketBase's true power and flexibility emerge. You can import PocketBase as a Go library into your own application. This allows you to "extend" the core functionality with custom server-side logic. You can:
- Add your own custom API routes that perform complex business logic.
- Use event hooks to run code before or after a database event occurs (e.g.,
OnRecordBeforeCreate,OnRecordAfterUpdate). - Integrate with other services, send emails, or process payments.
- Schedule custom background jobs (cron).
A Practical Go Framework Example
Let's see how simple it is to extend PocketBase. In this example, we'll start a PocketBase instance and add a custom API route and an event hook.
package main
import (
"log"
"net/http"
"os"
"github.com/labstack/echo/v5"
"github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase"
"github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase/apis"
"github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase/core"
)
func main() {
// Create a new PocketBase app instance
app := pocketbase.New()
// --- 1. Add a custom API route ---
// This runs before the default PocketBase routes.
app.OnBeforeServe().Add(func(e *core.ServeEvent) error {
// e.Router is an Echo router instance
e.Router.AddRoute(echo.Route{
Method: http.MethodGet,
Path: "/api/hello",
Handler: func(c echo.Context) error {
return c.JSON(http.StatusOK, map[string]string{"message": "Hello from our custom Go route!"})
},
// Add middleware to protect the route (e.g., require admin auth)
Middlewares: []echo.MiddlewareFunc{
apis.RequireAdminAuth(),
},
})
return nil
})
// --- 2. Add an event hook ---
// This hook fires right before a new record in the 'posts' collection is created.
app.OnRecordBeforeCreateRequest("posts").Add(func(e *core.RecordCreateEvent) error {
log.Printf("A new post is about to be created with data: %v", e.Record.PublicExport())
// You could add validation logic here, or modify the record before saving.
// For example, let's set a default 'author' if it's not provided.
if e.Record.GetString("author") == "" {
e.Record.Set("author", "anonymous")
}
return nil
})
// Start the app
if err := app.Start(); err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
}This small amount of Go code gives you complete control to build complex, server-side functionality on top of the solid foundation that PocketBase provides.
Conclusion: Who is PocketBase For?
PocketBase is a phenomenal tool, but it's important to understand its ideal use cases.
- It's perfect for: Rapid prototyping, MVPs, indie developers, internal tools, and small to medium-sized applications where development speed and simplicity are paramount.
- It might not be the best fit for: Large-scale, distributed systems requiring horizontal scaling and extremely high concurrent write loads, as it is fundamentally built on a single SQLite database file.
By bundling a database, auth, and API into a single, easy-to-manage package, PocketBase drastically lowers the barrier to building and launching full-stack applications. Whether you use it as a standalone BaaS or as an extensible Go framework, it's a powerful tool that brings joy and simplicity back to backend development.
