Database

Testing Your Database


To ensure that queries return the expected data, RLS policies are correctly applied and etc., we encourage you to write automated tests. There are essentially two approaches to testing:

  • Firstly, you can write tests that interface with a Supabase client instance (same way you use Supabase client in your application code) in the programming language(s) you use in your application and using your favorite testing framework.

  • Secondly, you can test through the Supabase CLI, which is a more low-level approach where you write tests in SQL.

Testing through the Supabase client

A good starting point are the tests written for the Supabase client itself. For example, here are the tests for the Supabase JS client written with TypeScript and Jest.

Keep in mind that the tests (which you'll likely integrate into your CI) need to run with the same DB setup that you're running locally. That means you need to make all changes to the database exclusively through migrations (not manually).

Testing using the Supabase CLI

You can use the Supabase CLI to test your database. The minimum required version of the CLI is v1.11.4. To get started:

Creating a test

Create a tests folder inside the supabase folder:


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mkdir -p ./supabase/tests/database

Create a new file with the .sql extension which will contain the test.


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touch ./supabase/tests/database/hello_world.test.sql

Writing tests

All sql files use pgTAP as the test runner.

Let's write a simple test to check that our auth.users table has an ID column. Open hello_world.test.sql and add the following code:


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begin;
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select plan(1); -- only one statement to run
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SELECT has_column(
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'auth',
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'users',
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'id',
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'id should exist'
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);
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select * from finish();
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rollback;

Running tests

To run the test, you can use:


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supabase test db

This will produce the following output:


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$ supabase test db
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supabase/tests/database/hello_world.test.sql .. ok
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All tests successful.
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Files=1, Tests=1, 1 wallclock secs ( 0.01 usr 0.00 sys + 0.04 cusr 0.02 csys = 0.07 CPU)
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Result: PASS

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