How Can You Create A Backend In Few Minutes Using PocketBase

This post will teach you how to create a powerful backend for your SaaS app using Pocketbase in just a few minutes. Yet, this backend is powerful and can scale up as your business grows.

Introduction To Pocketbase

Pocketbase is an Open Source backend for your  SaaS and Mobile app which is available in a single file. As of today, it has around 9.5k+ stars on GitHub. It includes some of the essential services such as

• Realtime Database
• Authentication
• File Storage

Getting Started

In order to get started, I assume you already have a Linux server running Ubuntu or Debian. Vultr is an excellent hosting choice if you're looking for one & If you sign up using the above link, you'll receive $100 in free credits

1. SSH onto your server and run the following commands to install the required utilities and to make sure that you have the latest piece of software

sudo apt install unzip nginx -y
sudo apt update 
sudo apt upgrade -y

2. Making our app directory and downloading pocket base from GitHub

mkdir app
cd app
wget  https://github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase/releases/download/v0.6.0/pocketbase_0.6.0_linux_amd64.zip
unzip pocketbase_0.6.0_linux_amd64.zip

3. To make sure that our apps never go down, we create a systemd file which should be located at /lib/systemd/system/pocketbase.service We can open up the file by running nano /lib/systemd/system/pocketbase.service

[Unit]
Description = pocketbase

[Service]
Type           = simple
User           = YOUR_USER
Group          = YOUR_GROUP
LimitNOFILE    = 4096
Restart        = always
RestartSec     = 5s
StandardOutput = append:/your/path/to/logs/errors.log
StandardError  = append:/your/path/to/logs/errors.log
ExecStart      = /your/path/to/pocketbase serve --http="yourdomain.com:80" --https="yourdomain.com:443"

[Install]
WantedBy = multi-user.target

3. To start and run the application run these commands

systemctl enable pocketbase.service
systemctl start pocketbase

Note: the service name should match the name given in the configuration    

Conclusion

• The only thing I felt odd about using this is the fact that it can only be used with SQLite database and can't be connected to any other database ( If there is an update on this kindly let me know in the comment section below)