FaunaDB Connector

This is a convenience wrapper class for the basic functionality of the FaunaDB Javascript API. This wrapper helps to simplify some of the syntax for these basic operations while still exposing the faunaDB package and Fauna Client. You can find more information on the FaunaDB javascript API here and basic tutorials here.

Basic use

To use the wrapper, import it and instantiate with your secret key. Using an admin key will allow you full access to actions within your fauna account while using other keys with different permissions or roles may limit what queries may be run.

const FaunaConnection = require('./faunadb-connector')
const fauna = new FaunaConnection({secret: <your_fauna_secret_here>})

All of the class functions return a promise. The connection can then be used like this:

fauna
  .createCollection('blog_posts')
  .then(res => console.log(res))
  .catch(err => console.log(err))

The underlying functions and client can be accessed as below for writing your own queries for those cases where the provided basic functions lack the scope you need.

fauna.q is faunadb.query
fauna.client is the faunadb.Client

Visit this webpage to view the class api.

Usage

Create a database

This will work only as long as the permissions/role of the secret key you provided are scoped to allow database creation.

fauna
  .createDB('blog_posts')
  .then(res => console.log(res))
  .catch(err => console.log(err))

The output should look like:

{ 
  ref: Database("blog_posts"), 
  ts: 1580933987495000, 
  name: 'blog_posts' 
}

Create Collection

fauna
  .createCollection('authors')
  .then(res => console.log(res))
  .catch(err => console.log(err))

The output should look like:

{ 
  ref: Collection("authors"),
  ts: 1580934704606000,
  history_days: 30,
  name: 'authors' 
}

Create Index

createIndex(name, src, terms=null, values=null)

params	type	description
name	string	a descriptive name for this index
src	string	the source collection this index will be applied to
terms	object	the terms to use for the index
values	object	the values to be used for the index

If you have just created a collection you will need to create an all index so that you can easily retrieve the items in your collection. Below is the most basic index you can create and requires no other arguments other than a descriptive index name and the collection that is the source.

fauna
  .createIndex('all_authors', 'authors')
  .then(res => console.log(res))
  .catch(err => console.log(err))

The output should look like:

{ 
  ref: Index("all_authors"),
  ts: 1580935056400000,
  active: true,
  serialized: true,
  name: 'all_authors',
  source: Collection("authors"),
  partitions: 8 
}

Indexes can be substantially more complicated than what you see above and much of that discussion is beyond the scope of this document. For more information on using Indexes, please check this out.

As to how to create more detailed indexes with this wrapper, know that you can pass in a terms and values object for building your index. For example, let's suppose you have a collection of authors, and each author document has a first name and a last name field. We might want to sort our authors by last name and then by first name in ascending order, so let's create an index to do that.

 
const values = [
  { field: ["data", "last"] },
  { field: ["data", "first"] },
  { field: ["ref"] }
]
 
fauna
  .createIndex('authors_sort_by_last_first_asc', 'authors', null, values)
  .then(res => console.log(res))
  .catch(err => console.log(err))

Our response should look something like:

{ 
  ref: Index("authors_sort_by_last_first_asc"),
  ts: 1580935873770000,
  active: true,
  serialized: true,
  name: 'authors_sort_by_last_first_asc',
  source: Collection("authors"),
  values:
    [ 
      { field: [Array] }, 
      { field: [Array] }, 
      { field: [Array] } 
    ],
  partitions: 8 
}

Create a document

All documents live inside collections, so to create a new document in FaunaDB, we pass in the collection name and the document we wish to store.

const author = {
  first_name: "Alex",
  last_name: "Smith"
}
 
fauna
  .create('authors', author)
  .then(res => console.log(res))
  .catch(err => console.log(err))

The response should look something like:

{ 
  ref: Ref(Collection("authors"), "256563456795214345"),
  ts: 1580936829280000,
  data: { first_name: 'Alex', last_name: 'Smith' } 
}

Creating multiple documents at once

The same #create function will also accept an array of documents. Each element in the array will be created as its own record.

const authorList = [
  {
    first_name: "Jack",
    last_name: "London"
  },
  {
    first_name: "Aldous",
    last_name: "Huxley"
  },
  {
    first_name: "Jane",
    last_name: "Austen"
  },
  {
    first_name: "Maya",
    last_name: "Angelou"
  },
]
 
fauna
  .create('authors', authorList)
  .then(res => console.log(res))
  .catch(err => console.log(err))

The response should look something like:

[ 
  { 
    ref: Ref(Collection("authors"), "256569179938754057"),
    ts: 1580942287315000,
    data: { first_name: 'Jack', last_name: 'London' } 
  },
  { 
    ref: Ref(Collection("authors"), "256569179938752009"),
    ts: 1580942287315000,
    data: { first_name: 'Aldous', last_name: 'Huxley' } 
  },
  { 
    ref: Ref(Collection("authors"), "256569179938750985"),
    ts: 1580942287315000,
    data: { first_name: 'Jane', last_name: 'Austen' } 
  },
  { 
    ref: Ref(Collection("authors"), "256569179938753033"),
    ts: 1580942287315000,
    data: { first_name: 'Maya', last_name: 'Angelou' } 
  } 
]

Creating with custom ID

The process is the same as above for creating documents, except that an array of touples must be passed in the function below. Each touple consists of [<custom_id>, <document>]. Each custom_id must be unique.

fauna.createWithCustomID(collection, touples)

Getting a document

There are several methods for retrieving a document from a collection within a database. The most basic #get works with the ref, or ID of the document and the collection name.

fauna
  .get('authors', '256569179938753033')
  .then(res => console.log(res))
  .catch(err => console.log(err))

The response should look something like:

{ 
  ref: Ref(Collection("authors"), "256569179938753033"),
  ts: 1580942287315000,
  data: { first_name: 'Maya', last_name: 'Angelou' } 
}

In order to get a document based on data within a document itself, we must first have created and index for this and told Fauna which term we would like to search on. For example, let's consider that we created an index as below:

 
const terms = [{ field: ['data', 'title'] }]
 
fauna.createIndex('posts_by_title', 'posts', term, null)

The above index would allow us to get a particular 'post' document by searching for it's title as shown below:

fauna
  .getMatch('posts_by_title', 'My cat and other marvels')
  .then(res => console.log(res))
  .catch(err => console.log(err))

Which, if the document exists, will return something like:

{ 
  ref: Ref(Collection("posts"), "256027278950009353"),
  ts: 1580425490300000,
  data: { title: 'My cat and other marvels' } 
}

Getting Multiple Documents

There are many options which can be used and I encourage you to check out the class api for greater detail since there a many options which are supported. Here we will go over the most basic implementation of retrieving all of the docs within a collection.

fauna
  .getAllDocsByIndex('all_authors')
  .then(res => console.log(res))
  .catch(err => console.log(err))

This call should return all of the documents in the collection in a form like this, where the nested data Object is the document itself:

{ 
  data:[ 
    { 
      ref: Ref(Collection("authors"), "256563456795214345"),
       ts: 1580936829280000,
       data: [Object] 
    },
    { 
      ref: Ref(Collection("authors"), "256568566847898122"),
       ts: 1580941702620000,
       data: [Object] 
    },
    { 
      ref: Ref(Collection("authors"), "256569179938750985"),
       ts: 1580942287315000,
       data: [Object] 
    },
    { 
      ref: Ref(Collection("authors"), "256569179938752009"),
       ts: 1580942287315000,
       data: [Object] 
    },
    { 
      ref: Ref(Collection("authors"), "256569179938753033"),
       ts: 1580942287315000,
       data: [Object] 
    },
    { 
      ref: Ref(Collection("authors"), "256569179938754057"),
       ts: 1580942287315000,
       data: [Object] 
    },
    { 
      ref: Ref(Collection("authors"), "256569241022497289"),
       ts: 1580942345550000,
       data: [Object] 
    } 
  ] 
}

Updating a document

To modify an existing document simply pass in the new data along with the reference to the document and collection.

const birthdate = {
  dob: "01/12/1876"
}
 
fauna
  .update('authors', "256569179938754057", birthdate)
  .then(res => console.log(res))
  .catch(err => console.log(err))

The response should look something like this:

{ 
  ref: Ref(Collection("authors"), "256569179938754057"),
  ts: 1581012583020000,
  data: { 
      first_name: 'Jack', 
      last_name: 'London', 
      dob: '01/12/1876' 
  } 
}

Note: we also support the replace function using the same parameter list as update. See the Fauna docs for more information on the difference between update and replace.

Deleting a document

A document can be removed using the delete function, passing in the collection and document reference.

fauna
  .delete('authors', "256569179938752009")
  .then(res => console.log(res))
  .catch(err => console.log(err))

The response returns the document that has been deleted.

{ 
  ref: Ref(Collection("authors"), "256569179938752009"),
  ts: 1580942287315000,
  data: { 
    first_name: 'Aldous', last_name: 'Huxley' 
  } 
}

Using the underlying API

There may be actions you desire to take for which there is not yet a wrapper function in this class. Consider the example from the Fauna Tutorials for Create a user defined function - we can use our fauna instance to write this like so:

fauna
  .client
  .query(
    fauna.q.CreateFunction({
      name: "create_entry",
      body: fauna.q.Query(
        fauna.q.Lambda(
          ['title', 'body'],
          fauna.q.Create(
            fauna.q.Collection('posts'),
            {
              data: {
                title: fauna.q.Var('title'),
                body: fauna.q.Var('body')
              }
            }
          )
        )
      ),
      permissions: { call: 'public' },
      role: 'server'
    })
  )
  .then(res => console.log(res))
  .catch(err => console.log(err))

Which will return a response like this:

{ 
  ref: Function("create_entry"),
  ts: 1581013836710000,
  name: 'create_entry',
  body: Query(
    Lambda(
      ["title", "body"], 
      Create(
        Collection("posts"), 
        {
          data: {
            title: Var("title"), 
            body: Var("body")
          }
        }
      )
    )
  ),
  permissions: { call: 'public' },
  role: 'server' 
}

Future Goals

This is only the beginning of a basic wrapper to make implementing calls to the FaunaDB Javascript API easier to re-use. While the hope is to expand upon this, there is no desire to deal with every possible scenario a developer might encounter. That being said, if anyone has a particular feature they would like to see, or has encountered a bug or other unanticipated behavior, please submit an issue and I will look into it as I am able.