Ponder Ship Week (1/5)

Direct SQL

With today’s release (0.3), you can directly query the Postgres or SQLite tables in a Ponder app.

Building ponder.sh. EVM, TypeScript, open-source enjoyer.

Use cases for direct SQL

1) A custom query that calculates points for an airdrop
2) Join on-chain data with off-chain data to power a complex UI view
3) Ad-hoc queries in to debug your app using `psql`
4) Use Ponder "headlessly" to add tables to an existing database

Direct SQL also unlocks new data fetching patterns

1) Raw SQL queries during SSR
2) REST endpoints
3) tRPC procedures
4) Custom GraphQL schema + resolvers

Soon, we’ll publish guides and examples for each.

Read the docs to learn about

1) Supported access patterns + footguns to avoid
2) How direct SQL works with redeployments in prod
3) Postgres/SQLite data types for each column type, e.g. p.hex()

ponder.sh/docs/guides/query-the-database

Why?

Until now, the GraphQL API was the only way to read data from a Ponder app.

It works, but many users find it too rigid or simply don’t like GraphQL. (I’m personally in this camp!)

Now, you can skip the GraphQL API and query the database directly.

This is awesome - we’re currently running 2 separate DBs for off chain data, excited to be able to consolidate!