Astro DB Has a Free API You're Not Using

Astro DB is a fully-managed SQL database built into Astro. It's powered by LibSQL (Turso) and gives you type-safe database access with zero configuration.

The Free APIs You're Missing

1. Schema Definition — TypeScript-First

// db/config.ts
import { defineDb, defineTable, column } from "astro:db";

const Post = defineTable({
  columns: {
    id: column.number({ primaryKey: true }),
    title: column.text(),
    slug: column.text({ unique: true }),
    content: column.text(),
    published: column.boolean({ default: false }),
    authorId: column.number({ references: () => Author.columns.id }),
    createdAt: column.date({ default: new Date() }),
  },
});

const Author = defineTable({
  columns: {
    id: column.number({ primaryKey: true }),
    name: column.text(),
    email: column.text({ unique: true }),
  },
});

export default defineDb({ tables: { Post, Author } });

Full type inference from schema. No codegen step.

2. Seeding — Type-Safe Data Loading

// db/seed.ts
import { db, Post, Author } from "astro:db";

export default async function seed() {
  await db.insert(Author).values([
    { id: 1, name: "Alice", email: "[e-mail]" },
    { id: 2, name: "Bob", email: "[e-mail]" },
  ]);

  await db.insert(Post).values([
    { id: 1, title: "Hello Astro DB", slug: "hello-astro-db", content: "...", authorId: 1 },
  ]);
}

3. Drizzle-Powered Queries — Full SQL Power

import { db, Post, Author, eq, desc, like, sql } from "astro:db";

// Type-safe queries
const posts = await db.select()
  .from(Post)
  .where(eq(Post.published, true))
  .orderBy(desc(Post.createdAt))
  .limit(10);

// Joins
const postsWithAuthors = await db.select({
  title: Post.title,
  authorName: Author.name,
})
  .from(Post)
  .innerJoin(Author, eq(Post.authorId, Author.columns.id));

// Aggregations
const stats = await db.select({
  authorId: Post.authorId,
  count: sql<number>`count(*)`,
})
  .from(Post)
  .groupBy(Post.authorId);

4. Server Endpoints — API Routes with DB

// src/pages/api/posts.ts
import type { APIRoute } from "astro";
import { db, Post } from "astro:db";

export const GET: APIRoute = async () => {
  const posts = await db.select().from(Post).where(eq(Post.published, true));
  return new Response(JSON.stringify(posts));
};

export const POST: APIRoute = async ({ request }) => {
  const data = await request.json();
  const [post] = await db.insert(Post).values(data).returning();
  return new Response(JSON.stringify(post), { status: 201 });
};

5. Studio — Visual Database Manager

astro db push     # Push schema to Astro Studio
astro db verify   # Verify remote schema matches local
astro db shell    # Interactive SQL shell

Getting Started

npx astro add db
astro dev

---

Need data from any website delivered as clean JSON? I build production web scrapers that handle anti-bot, proxies, and rate limits. 77 scrapers running in production. Email me: [e-mail]

Check out my awesome-web-scraping list for the best scraping tools and resources.