Connecting to Supabase

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Connect to Supabase with a direct connection

Sequin uses the Write Ahead Log (WAL) to capture changes from your Supabase database. Supabase’s connection pooling does not support the WAL, so you need to connect to your Supabase database using a direct connection.

Here is how to set up a direct connection in Supabase:

1

Navigate to your database settings

Login to Supabase and navigate to the database settings page (Settings > Configurations > Database).

2

Get direct connection credentials

Disable the Use connection pooling option to show your direct connection credentials:

Sequin is fully compatible with Supabase’s IPv6 network.

3

Enter the connection details in Sequin

In Sequin, enter the direct connection details in the Database connection page including the Host, Port, Database, User, and Password.

For Supabase, turn SSL on.

Sequin will automatically detect that you’re using a Supabase database and will check that your connection is configured correctly.

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Create a replication slot in Supabase

With your database connected, you’ll now create the replication slot that Sequin will use to detect changes in your database.

select pg_create_logical_replication_slot('sequin_slot', 'pgoutput');

create publication sequin_pub for table table1, table2, table3;

create publication sequin_pub for all tables;

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Moving Supabase webhooks to Sequin

Sequin has some helpful features that Supabase webhooks lack:

• Exactly-once processing guarantees ensuring every event is processed once and only once.
• Automatic retries and backoff for failed events.
• Filtering of events with no PL/pgSQL.
• Backfill support to sync historical data.
• Helpful observability and debugging tools.

You can easily move your existing Supabase webhooks to Sequin by creating Sequin HTTP push consumers.

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Example Supabase webhook to migrate

As an example, here’s a webhook trigger in Supabase for a hypothetical orders table:

• SQL
• Supabase Console

  create trigger new_order
  after insert on public.orders
  for each row
  execute function supabase_functions.http_request ('https://webhook.site/4f1af4fe-ce43-4530-9d75-f0f2abc086f6', 'POST', '{"Content-type":"application/json"}', '{}', '1000')

In this example, a postgres trigger fires anytime a new record is added to the orders table. The trigger then fires a webhook (via pg_net) to send the data to an HTTP endpoint.

When the trigger fires, Supabase sends the data to the endpoint with the following payload:

{
  "type": "INSERT",
  "table": "orders",
  "record": {
    "id": 4,
    "user_id": 4,
    "order_date": "2024-09-03T18:32:48.108729+00:00",
    "total_amount": 154.97
  },
  "schema": "public",
  "old_record": null
}

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Sequin HTTP push consumer

To create this exact webhook in Sequin, you’ll create an HTTP push consumer on the orders table with no filters. Here’s how to do it:

1

Select your database and table

In the Sequin Console, navigate to the Consumers page, click Create Consumer.

Select your Supabase database and the public.orders table.

2

Set filters and operations

Don’t configure any filters and set the consumer to capture just INSERT operations:

3

Select Change stream to HTTP Push

To mimic the behavior of the Supabase webhook, select Change stream as the stream type and then HTTP Push as the consumer type.

4

Add your webhook URL

Finally, give your consumer a name, set a timeout, and add your webhook URL:

Sequin gives you more control over webhook delivery and retries including a higher request timeout, automatic retries, and the ability to configure max ack pending (e.g. the consumer will stop sending new events to the endpoint if a certain number of events are not acknowledged). Additionally, you can authenticate the messages delivered to your endpoint with encrypted headers.

5

Set the replica identity to `full`

Once you create your Consumer, Sequin will verify your configuration. To ensure Sequin can capture the old values for update and delete operations, you’ll be prompted to set the replica identity to full by running the following SQL command:

alter table orders replica identity full;

Now, when you create a new order in Supabase, Sequin will capture the change and send it to your endpoint:

{
  "record": {
    "id": 5,
    "order_date": "2024-09-03T19:41:17Z",
    "total_amount": "154.97",
    "user_id": 5
  },
  "metadata": {
    "consumer": {
      "id": "107adb3d-76b4-40ba-8e9d-587f9871ab5c",
      "name": "new_order"
    },
    "table_name": "orders",
    "table_schema": "public",
    "commit_timestamp": "2024-09-03T19:41:17.650384Z"
  },
  "action": "insert",
  "changes": null
}

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Triggering a Supabase edge function with Sequin

Sequin can trigger Supabase edge functions by calling the function’s endpoint URL. This is an alternative to triggering Supabase edge functions with Supabase webhooks. Sequin improves on the Supabase workflow by offering more features, like retries for failed events.

1

Update the edge function to process Sequin's payload

Update the edge function to process Sequin’s event payload. Note that while Sequin’s record payload is the same, the keys changes, actions, and metadata are different:

2

Deploy the edge function and retrieve the URL

Using the Supabase CLI, deploy your edge function:

supabase functions deploy {your-function-name}

Once deployed, you can retrieve the URL of the edge function by logging into the Supabase Dashboard and navigating to the Edge Functions page:

3

Create a Sequin push consumer

With your edge function URL in hand, you ‘ll create a Sequin push consumer:

• Set the endpoint to the edge function URL.
• Add an authentication to your POST request with the key Authorization and the value Bearer YOUR_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY.

The Authorization header is required to authenticate the request with the edge function. You can find your SUPABASE_ANON_KEY in the Settings > API page in the Supabase Dashboard. If you don’t want to authenticate your request (i.e. make the edge function public), you can deploy the edge function with the --no-verify-jwt flag.

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Next steps

Sequin is a great complement to Supabase. This guide showed you how to connect Supabase to Sequin and start moving your webhooks and edge function triggers to Sequin. From here, you may want to:

• Refine your webhooks / triggers by using more specific filters. Perhaps you can move logic out of your edge function and into your consumer filters.
• Use Sequin’s HTTP pull consumer to gain more control over event consumption.
• Use Sequin’s replay and backfill features to run historical data through your edge function.
• Use Sequin’s observability features to monitor and debug your webhooks and triggers.