Use Supabase with TanStack Start

1. Create a Supabase project#

Before you can use Supabase, you need a Supabase project. You can create a project visually in the Dashboard or programmatically using the Management API.

2. Install agent skills (optional)#

Agent Skills are curated instruction sets that give your AI agent procedural knowledge about working with Supabase.

Install them in your project with:

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npx skills add supabase/agent-skills

3. Set up your database#

When your Supabase project is up and running, create an instruments table with some sample data. Then set only the privileges each Postgres role needs, add Row Level Security (RLS) for enhanced security for database data by default, and create an RLS policy to make the data in the table publicly readable.

Or do this manually in your project's SQL Editor, by pasting the SQL below, and clicking Run.

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-- Create the table
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create table instruments (
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  id bigint primary key generated always as identity,
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  name text not null
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);
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-- Insert sample data into the table
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insert into instruments (name)
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values
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  ('violin'),
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  ('viola'),
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  ('cello');
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-- Grant the privileges the role needs, which is read access
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grant select on public.instruments to anon;
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-- Enable row level security for the table
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alter table instruments enable row level security;
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-- Create a policy to allow the anon role to read from the instruments table
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create policy "public can read instruments"
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on public.instruments
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for select to anon
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using (true);

4. Create a TanStack Start app#

Create a TanStack Start app using the official CLI.

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npm create @tanstack/start@latest my-app -- --package-manager npm --toolchain biome

5. Install the Supabase client library#

The fastest way to get started is to use the supabase-js client library which provides a convenient interface for working with Supabase from a TanStack Start app.

Navigate to the TanStack Start app and install supabase-js.

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cd my-app && npm install @supabase/supabase-js

Get API details#

To interact with data in database tables, you use the client libraries that wrap the auto-generated Data API endpoints, authenticating using the Project URL and key from the project Connect dialog.

6. Declare Supabase environment variables#

Create a .env file in the root of your project and populate with your Supabase connection variables that you can get from the helper above, or from the project Connect panel:

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VITE_SUPABASE_URL=<SUBSTITUTE_SUPABASE_URL>
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VITE_SUPABASE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY=<SUBSTITUTE_SUPABASE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY>

7. Create a Supabase client utility#

Create a new file at src/utils/supabase.ts to initialize the Supabase client.

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import { createClient } from '@supabase/supabase-js'
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export const supabase = createClient(
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  import.meta.env.VITE_SUPABASE_URL,
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  import.meta.env.VITE_SUPABASE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY
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)

8. Query data from the app#

Replace the contents of src/routes/index.tsx with the following code to add a loader function that fetches the instruments data and displays it on the page.

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import { createFileRoute } from '@tanstack/react-router'
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import { supabase } from '../utils/supabase'
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export const Route = createFileRoute('/')({
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  loader: async () => {
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    const { data: instruments } = await supabase.from('instruments').select()
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    return { instruments }
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  },
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  component: Home,
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})
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function Home() {
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  const { instruments } = Route.useLoaderData()
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  return (
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    <ul>
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      {instruments?.map((instrument) => (
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        <li key={instrument.name}>{instrument.name}</li>
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      ))}
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    </ul>
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  )
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}

9. Start the app#

Run the development server, go to http://localhost:3000 in a browser and you should see the list of instruments.

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npm run dev

Next steps#

• Explore drop-in UI components for your Supabase app
• Set up Auth for your app
• Insert more data into your database
• Upload and serve static files using Storage