Creating API Routes

API routes are automatically created when you create Postgres Tables, Views, or Functions.

Create a table

Let's create our first API route by creating a table called todos to store tasks. This creates a corresponding route todos which can accept GET, POST, PATCH, & DELETE requests.

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1. Go to the Table editor page in the Dashboard.
2. Click New Table and create a table with the name todos.
3. Click Save.
4. Click New Column and create a column with the name task and type text.
5. Click Save.
6. In the Integrations > Data API section of the Dashboard, expose specific tables like todos or the functions you want to access. To automatically grant access for new tables and functions in public, enable Default privileges for new entities.

-- Create a table called "todos" with a column to store tasks.
create table
  todos (
    id bigint generated by default as identity primary key,
    task text check (char_length(task) > 3)
  );

-- Enable Data API access with least-privilege grants
-- Allow read-only access for anonymous clients
grant select on public.todos to anon;
-- Allow full CRUD for authenticated clients
grant select, insert, update, delete on public.todos to authenticated;
-- Allow full CRUD for the server-side service role
grant select, insert, update, delete on public.todos to service_role;
-- Important: enable Row Level Security and create appropriate policies
-- before granting write access to client roles (see RLS guide)

Granting privileges (like select or execute) to roles such as anon or authenticated makes those tables or functions accessible through the Data API. Behind the scenes, the API checks your Postgres permissions—only objects with explicit grants are exposed, and all other access is denied by default.

API URL and keys

Every Supabase project has a unique API URL. Your API is secured behind an API gateway which requires an API Key for every request.

To do this, you need to get the Project URL and key from the project's Connect dialog.

Supabase is changing the way keys work to improve project security and developer experience. You can read the full announcement, but in the transition period, you can use both the current anon and service_role keys and the new publishable key with the form sb_publishable_xxx which will replace the older keys.

In most cases, you can get the correct key from the Project's Connect dialog, but if you want a specific key, you can find all keys in the API Keys section of a Project's Settings page:

• For legacy keys, copy the anon key for client-side operations and the service_role key for server-side operations from the Legacy API Keys tab.
• For new keys, open the API Keys tab, if you don't have a publishable key already, click Create new API Keys, and copy the value from the Publishable key section.

Read the API keys docs for a full explanation of all key types and their uses.

The REST API is accessible through the URL https://<project_ref>.supabase.co/rest/v1

Both of these routes require the key to be passed through an apikey header.

Using the API

You can interact with your API directly via HTTP requests, or you can use the client libraries which we provide.

Let's see how to make a request to the todos table which we created in the first step, using the API URL (SUPABASE_URL) and Key (SUPABASE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY) we provided:

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// Initialize the JS client
import { createClient } from '@supabase/supabase-js'

const supabase = createClient(SUPABASE_URL, SUPABASE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY)

// Make a request
const { data: todos, error } = await supabase.from('todos').select('*')

# Append /rest/v1/ to your URL, and then use the table name as the route
curl '<SUPABASE_URL>/rest/v1/todos' \
-H "apikey: <SUPABASE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY>" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer <SUPABASE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY>"

JS Reference: select(), insert(), update(), upsert(), delete(), rpc() (call Postgres functions).