Key Concepts

🚀 Instance

Your Swiftybase instance is the core of your backend, hosted directly on your Fly.io account—giving you full control without any extra pricing from Swiftybase. Each instance contains your APIs, user data, and more, ensuring a fully isolated and scalable backend environment.

Since your instance runs on your own Fly.io account, you are not sharing resources with other users, ensuring consistent performance and security.

🧠 Backend

The backend is the engine of your application, handling everything users don’t see. Whether fetching data, managing user authentication, or processing payments, it ensures your app runs smoothly behind the scenes. Swiftybase provides a powerful, scalable backend so you can focus on building, not infrastructure.

🎨 Frontend

The frontend is everything your users see and interact with—the buttons, layouts, and animations that make an app visually appealing and easy to use. While Swiftybase focuses on backend development, it seamlessly integrates with any frontend, whether it's a web app, mobile app, or IoT device.

🔀 Branches (Development & Production)

Every project in Swiftybase comes with two dedicated environments:

• Development (example-dev.fly.dev) – Where you build, test, and iterate.
• Production (example.fly.dev) – A fully optimized deployment environment. When you deploy your app, Swiftybase compiles and optimizes everything for production, ensuring efficiency and stability.

🗄️ Database

Swiftybase supports bring-your-own-database, giving you flexibility and control.

• First-class support for MySQL (PlanetScale) – Seamlessly deploy database changes.
• Regular MySQL databases – Connect any self-hosted MySQL instance.
• Full PostgreSQL support in function stack – For robust and scalable backend logic.

API

APIs allow different applications to communicate and share data with each other. For example, when you use a payment gateway like PayPal to complete a purchase on an e-commerce site, that’s an API at work. APIs work behind the scenes whenever you interact with different services or components of an app.

APIs don't have to only be based on user actions. For instance, websites often use APIs for background tasks like checking the status of a server or syncing data. These API calls happen as you navigate the site, ensuring everything runs smoothly.

APIs set the rules for how different pieces of software can talk to each other, enabling developers to integrate various services without having to build everything from scratch.

An API has a few main components:

• Headers
  Headers are the configuration that rides along with an API request. They contain information like where the request is coming from and what type of data it contains.

• Method
  The method, also known as the verb, is assigned to an API to dictate the type of operation it is designed to complete.

  • GET – Retrieve data
  • POST – Send data
  • PUT / PATCH – Update data
  • DELETE – Delete data

  When building APIs, you can choose the method, giving you full flexibility in the functions the API serves. For example, a DELETE endpoint could technically add new data, if it aligns with your use case.

• Query Parameters / Request Body
  Query parameters and the request body are both used to send data, but in different ways.

  • Query parameters live as part of the request URL. If the API expects a parameter like thingId, you append it to the URL, e.g., https://myapi.com/getThings?thingId=99. Query parameters are commonly used with GET and DELETE endpoints.
  • Request Body is sent as a JSON object, and it’s more flexible for complex data like lists, nested objects, or files.

• Response
  The response is what the API sends back once it has completed its logic. While not every API needs to deliver a response, it’s common. For instance, when a user logs in, the API might return details like their name, location, and relevant user data.

A response includes headers and a response body, similar to the request, and provides the result of the API’s operation.

📜 JSON

JSON is a lightweight, human-readable format used to structure data in simple key-value pairs. It’s flexible and easy for both humans and machines to understand, making it ideal for passing data between servers and web applications.

While similar to code, JSON is not programming—it’s a standardized way to organize data. Think of it like your favorite blog’s layout. If every day it changed its format, it would be harder to digest. JSON ensures consistent, organized data that’s easy to work with.

ℹ️ JSON Data Types

It is important to know what types of data are valid representations inside of a JSON object. One of the most important things to remember when working with JSON is that quotation marks are incredibly important and can be the difference between something working or falling apart.

• 🔤 Strings are surrounded by "quotation marks" and are just plain text.

{
  "name": "Rebaz"
}

• 🔢 Integers are numbers that are not decimals. Notice how we do not have quotation marks around 1994 in the example below. If we used "1994" instead, this would become a string.

{ 
   "year": 1994
}

• 🔢 Decimals are numbers that contain a decimal point.

{
  "price": 9.99
}

• ✅ Booleans are true or false values.

{
  "exists": true
}

• ⛔ Null is a special data type that represents nothing in situations where you need to specify that nothing is provided.

{ "phone": null }

• 📑 Arrays are lists of things. These could be any other valid JSON data type. You could even have an array of arrays if you wanted.

[
  "red",
  "blue",
  "green"
]

• 📄 Objects are collections of key-value pairs enclosed in curly braces. Keys are always strings, but values can be any valid JSON data type.

{
  "name": "Rebaz",
  "age": 30,
  "city": "New York",
  "isStudent": false
}