data-providers.md

Data Providers

By default, the CRM demo uses Supabase for the backend API. Supabase is an open-source alternative to Firebase, built on top of Postgres. It provides a REST API and a real-time subscription system. The generous free tier allows you to run a small CRM for free.

Using A Fake API For Development

For development purposes, you can use an alternative data provider called FakeRest. It's a simple REST API running in the browser that resets the data on each page reload. It's useful for testing the frontend without having to set up a backend, e.g. to let end users test some updates before the backend is ready.

FakeRest is used in the React Admin CRM demo, where you can test it live.

Setting Up The FakeRest Data Provider

To set up the FakeRest data provider, you need to change the dataProvider import in the src/App.tsx file:

// in src/App.tsx
import { CRM } from './root/CRM';
+ import { dataProvider, authProvider } from './providers/fakerest';

const App = () => (
    <CRM 
+        dataProvider={dataProvider}
+        authProvider={authProvider}
    />
);

export default App;

Filters Syntax

The list filters used in this project MUST follow the ra-data-postgrest convention, where the filter operator is concatenated to the field name with an @. For example, to filter contacts by first name, you would use the first_name@eq filter.

When using FakeRest, the filters are mapped at runtime to the FakeRest filter syntax by the the supabaseAdapter file. If a filter is not yet supported by the adapter, you have to modify this file to add support for it.