Allow long-running transactions at the client side or do relational inserts

[bdlukaa]

Feature request

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Transactions are a fundamental concept of all database systems. The essential point of a transaction is that it bundles multiple steps into a single, all-or-nothing operation. The intermediate states between the steps are not visible to other concurrent transactions, and if some failure occurs that prevents the transaction from completing, then none of the steps affect the database at all.

Describe the solution you'd like

Implement an easy way to create transactions. Something like:

db.runTransaction(() {
  // run the operations here
})

Describe alternatives you've considered

Create a rpc function that runs the commands. This is suitable for small apps, but wouldn't work for large apps, since multiple functions would be created.

Additional context

supabase/supabase-dart#60
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/tutorial-transactions.html
supabase/supabase#526

[steve-chavez]

Another alternative might be doing PostgREST/postgrest#818 (comment).

I've been noticing that most of the transaction needs are because of inserts on tables that are related through foreign keys. Doing it this way would save the need for exposing a generic transaction interface and avoid any potential issues with clients leaving transactions open for too long.

An insert + update + update(use case from supabase/supabase-dart#60) could also be solved with a "relational upsert" interface.

Related:

• Save many-to-many relationships via js sdk supabase#4081
• Add transactions for read and write operations on one or more documents #237
• Client-side database transactions supabase#526

[JasonChiu-dev]

Transactions are a fundamental concept of all database systems. The essential point of a transaction is that it bundles multiple steps into a single, all-or-nothing operation. The intermediate states between the steps are not visible to other concurrent transactions, and if some failure occurs that prevents the transaction from completing, then none of the steps affect the database at all.

Describe the solution you'd like

Implement an easy way to create transactions. Something like:

db.runTransaction(() {
  // run the operations here
})

Describe alternatives you've considered

Create a rpc function that runs the commands. This is suitable for small apps, but wouldn't work for large apps, since multiple functions would be created.

I totally agree with the viewpoint.
I am developing a big project App and it need lots of database actions for handling the project's demands. The data structure complexities are not easy to handle by rpc for complex arguments which is also hard to maintain.

So

db.runTransaction(() {
// run the operations here
})

the above transaction functionality is urgent needed as the standard equipment for supabase.dart.

I appreciated!!

[dreinon]

Hi! What's the status of this issue?

[cory-weiner]

Also interested in if there has been any progress made on this? We are deciding on the backend for our stack and the lack of transactions will likely rule out supabase unless it is on the roadmap for this year.

[steve-chavez]

@dreinon @cory-weiner I'll revisit this one after launch week(August).

[steffenstolze]

@steve-chavez imho this feature is very important. I can't think of any non-trivial RDBMS use-case that can work without transactions - except simple apps without many relationships.
Data is relational, so is interaction with data.
Having to outsource almost everything into Postgres functions is a bit cumbersome.

[giladv]

Also wanted to agree with the previous comment that supabase without transactions is borderline unusable.
No app with basic relationships can be reliably ran this way.

[unknown1337]

@dreinon @cory-weiner I'll revisit this one after launch week(August).

Do you have an update on this? really curious!